#implied blinded sorrows...

[purpleleafsyt]

Afterthought

@idoodlemen

[cherry-lala]

Whispers of Memories, Chains of Time

Parings: human-turned-vampire!Remmick x human-turned-vampire!Poc fem reader

Genres: Southern Gothic ,Vampire Romance ,Dark Angst,Supernatural Tragedy, Fluff(..)

Wordcount:14.8k+

Content warning: vampire transformation (non-consensual), blood, emotional manipulation, obsession, toxic romance, grief, PTSD, trauma aftermath, sexual tension, implied sex, body horror, hunting/killing, possessiveness, violence (not glorified), slow descent into monsterhood

A/n: this was a request from @0angel-tears0 , and i truly poured my heart into bringing it to life. i tried to weave in every detail that was asked for, and i hope it resonates with you the way it did with me while writing. thank you for the inspiration—i really hope you enjoy it. And thank you for the support^^

He was on his knees.

Not like a man prayin’, but like one beggin’ the grave to let him stay buried.

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” Remmick rasped, voice low and cracked, like gravel dragged through honey. His hands hovered near mine, never quite touchin’. “You want me gone, I’ll disappear. You want me dead, well… you know better than most, darlin’. That ain’t never been easy.”

The rain hit the ground like it was tryin’ to drown out the past.

I stood there, silent. Watchin’ the same man who once turned my blood to fire now tremble like he ain’t felt warmth in centuries. His eyes flickered red. Still beautiful. Still dangerous. Still mine—once.

And then the memory came back sharp as bone:

His mouth at my throat.

My scream shatterin’ the quiet.

The taste of betrayal on my tongue before I ever knew what betrayal truly was.

The night he turned me.

The night I stopped bein’ his salvation and became his punishment.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Remmick's Pov

The smoke from the baker’s chimney curled lazy into the grey mornin’, twistin’ up toward a sky that hadn’t yet made up its mind. Pale, dull, hangin’ low like grief. I shifted the crate on my shoulder, feelin’ the dig of wood through damp wool. My boots were slick with yesterday’s rain, slippin’ now and then on the cobbles that shone like a drunkard’s teeth—wet and crooked.

I passed the butcher, same as always. He gave me a nod stiff as his apron. Behind him, the meat swung on hooks, pink and heavy, lookin’ like saints in some holy place I’d never set foot in. I hated that shop. Too many flies. Too many mouths left open, waitin’ for a prayer that’d never come.

The crate weren’t much—few bottles of oil, sacks of dried lavender, and somethin’ sealed in wax I didn’t bother askin’ after. I just hauled it. Dropped it off with the woman behind the counter who didn’t look me in the eye, and left. No lingerin’. Places that smelled like sickness and sorrow weren’t ones I liked to haunt long.

I’d lived in this village long enough that most folks stopped whisperin’. Didn’t mean they trusted me. Just meant I was another fixture—like a broken fence or an old gate that still held up in a storm. I worked. Didn’t drink myself blind. Didn’t steal. Kept to myself. That was enough for them.

But it weren’t enough for me.

Some days I wondered if I was real at all. Or just a shadow they let move through the fog.

I took the back path out, cuttin’ ‘round the edge of the market square. Didn’t care for crowds. The noise. The eyes.

That’s when I saw her.

Not all at once. Just a flicker first—somethin’ movin’ slow near the trees where the path opened wide. A figure bent low, rearrangin’ a basket. Her movements were deliberate, like the world could wait its turn. Like she had all the time God ever gave.

Her dress was simple, but it carried different. Lighter. Like she came from somewhere the sun hit softer. And her—

Christ.

I don’t know the word for what she was.

Not just beautiful. No.

Marked.

Like the earth itself had touched her, pressed a thumbprint right into her soul, and said: this one.

I should’ve kept walkin’. I didn’t.

She straightened, basket shiftin’ easy on her hip like it belonged there. The light caught her skin, and it weren’t fair, how it looked. Her eyes passed over me once—just a blink—but they didn’t flinch. Didn’t linger.

That’s what did it.

She didn’t look at me like I was strange. Or cursed. Or nothin’. She looked past me. Like she’d seen worse. Lived through more. Like she carried the memory of fire behind her ribs and still breathed easy through the smoke.

And me?

I forgot the path. Forgot the ache in my shoulder and the filth on my hands. Forgot the hinge I was meant to fix, the roof that needed patchin’. Forgot the name I answered to.

She turned.

Walked into the crowd and was gone.

And my chest—quiet near a decade—stirred like somethin’ old had woken up in it.

Somethin’ dangerous.

Somethin’ like hunger.

Or recognition.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The next time I saw her, it was rainin’.

Not the sort that passed in a hush and vanished clean. No, this was the old kind. The kind that settled in your bones and made the village feel more graveyard than home. Clouds hung low, heavy as guilt. The air smelled like peat, smoke, and wet wool.

I hadn’t planned on cuttin’ through the square. Meant to head straight to the chapel—Father Callahan’d cracked a hinge clean off the sacristy door again, and I’d promised to fix it. Hammer tucked under my coat, hands still black with soot from cleanin’ out the baker’s flue that mornin’. My back ached. My boots were soaked.

And then—

I saw her.

She stood quiet as a shadow in front of the apothecary, tucked beneath the narrow eave that dripped steady at her feet. Her dress was simple, the color of river clay, clingin’ to her like the rain knew better than to touch her skin. A basket sat on the crook of her arm, filled with wild garlic and herbs, and her other hand held a cloth to her lips—like she was keepin’ something back.

A cough. Or a secret.

I oughta have kept walkin’.

But I didn’t.

I stood there like a daft fool in the muck, starin’ at her like the rain could wash the sense back into me.

She looked up.

And this time, she saw me.

Really saw me.

Her eyes—dark as peat, clear as glass—locked with mine. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. Didn’t carry the same weight in her stare that most folks did when they looked my way. There was no pity. No suspicion.

Just stillness.

She wore it like armor.

Like maybe the storm belonged to her.

“You alright there?” I called, my voice louder than I meant over the hiss of rain.

Her gaze dipped for a breath, then came back. She lowered the cloth. “Far as I can be, considerin’,” she said. Her voice was even, lower than I remembered. The words came proper enough, but the sound of her was not local. Something about it curled at the edges. Like she’d learned the language well but carried a different song in her throat.

“You’re not from here,” I said. The words left me before I could think to swallow ‘em.

Her lips twitched, not quite smilin’. “Neither are you.”

She weren’t wrong.

Folk around here called me the outsider. Came in after my brother passed, and I stayed—fixin’ broken fences, sharpenin’ shears, patchin’ roofs after windstorms. I kept to myself. Said little. Answered less. Most folks left me be. Grief has a way of makin’ ghosts of the livin’.

But she—she was no ghost.

She was too solid. Too certain.

“You deal in herbs?” I asked, noddin’ toward her basket.

She glanced down, then back. “Some for trade. Some for me. Depends who’s askin’.”

“Folk here don’t always take kindly to unfamiliar hands mixin’ medicine.”

“They don’t take kindly to much at all,” she said. Her tone didn’t shift. Didn’t get sharp or soft. “But I’m not here to please them.”

My mouth twitched. Could’ve been a smile. Could’ve been a warning.

“They call me Remmick,” I offered, though I don’t know why. She hadn’t asked.

She nodded slow, like she was tuckin’ the name somewhere safe. “I’ve heard of you. Fix things, don’t you?”

I gave a short nod. “Try to.”

She tilted her head, studyin’ me like I was a nail half-driven. “Can you fix what ain’t made of wood or iron?”

I blinked. “Suppose that depends on how broke it is.”

That made her pause. Her eyes lingered, like she was weighin’ my words on a scale only she could read.

“Good answer,” she murmured, and stepped out into the rain.

She moved like dusk—quiet, certain, untouched by the cold. Her shoes sank into the mud, her hair clung to her nape, and still she didn’t flinch. Didn’t falter. Didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

I stood there a long while after she’d gone, hammer still clutched in my hand, like I’d forgotten what I was doin’.

Something about her wouldn’t let go.

It wasn’t just her face, though it was a face worth rememberin’.

It was the way she made the world feel like it wasn’t mine anymore.

Like she’d stepped out of some place older than time.

And my soul—fool that it is—reached for her like it already knew the fall was comin’.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The next time I saw her, I was carryin’ a sack of empty flour tins and cussin’ at the wind. The path out toward the edge of town had turned near to muck from the week’s worth of rain, and the soles of my boots were caked thick with it. I’d been sent by old Mr. Fallon to fetch a bundle of dried thyme and wild caraway for his bread—claimed the flavor wouldn’t be worth spit without it. Gave me a half-torn scrap with the address written in crooked scrawl and waved me off like I didn’t have ten other things to fix today.

I followed the directions, takin’ the narrow road past the blacksmith’s, past the place where the woods leaned too close to the path, until the town itself felt far behind me. When I reached the cottage, it was tucked back in a thicket of elder trees, vines curlin’ up its stone sides like time was tryin’ to reclaim it.

Didn’t seem like the sort of place anybody lived.

But there was smoke risin’ from the chimney, soft and pale.

I knocked on the door. Didn’t expect her to answer.

But she did.

The door creaked open slow, and there she stood. Same earth-toned dress, sleeves rolled up this time, fingers stained green from somethin’ she’d been grinding. Her hair was wrapped back, loose pieces stickin’ to her temple from sweat.

I blinked. She didn’t.

“You here for the baker’s herbs?” she asked, before I could speak.

“Aye,” I said, a little too quick. “Didn’t know it was you who put ‘em together.”

She gave a small shrug, half-turning back into the house. “I make do with what I can. Come on in. It’s dry, at least.”

I hesitated on the threshold.

Then stepped inside.

The cottage smelled like cedar smoke and mint, sharp with somethin’ bitter beneath it—wormwood, maybe, or sorrow. Shelves lined the walls, filled with glass jars and cloth bundles, herbs hangin’ to dry like prayer strings. Light came in soft through the foggy windows, catchin’ on the motes floatin’ in the air.

I watched her move through the space like she belonged to it. Like the walls were built to her shape.

“You live alone out here?” I asked, settin’ the tin sack down by the door.

She nodded without lookin’ back. “Folk don’t visit much. Suits me fine.”

“Bit far from everything, don’t you think?”

Her hands didn’t stop as she tied a bundle of dried leaves with twine. “Distance keeps peace. Or at least quiet.”

I hummed low. “Seems lonely.”

She paused, just a moment. “Lonely’s better than bein’ caged.”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

She turned then, handin’ me the bundle wrapped in cloth. “Here. Tell Fallon I added wild rosemary. He’ll complain, but he’ll use it anyway.”

I took the bundle, our fingers brushin’ again. Brief, but not unremarkable.

“Thank you,” I said. “For this.”

She nodded. Her eyes lingered on mine longer than they should’ve.

“You always this polite, or just when you’re in someone’s home?”

I let a ghost of a smile tug at my mouth. “Only when I’m talkin’ to someone who don’t scare easy.”

She raised an eyebrow, a corner of her lip curlin’. “Good. I don’t trust men who only speak sweet to the meek.”

There was a silence then—an easy one, somehow, but it sat heavy with things unspoken.

“You never gave me your name,” I said, shifting the weight of the herbs in my hands.

She looked down, then back up. “That’s ‘cause I haven’t decided if you’ve earned it.”

And damn me, but I liked the sound of that.

“Well,” I said, stepping back toward the door, “if you ever reckon I have, I’ll be around. Usually fixin’ things folk’ve broken.”

She tilted her head, arms crossed now. “Maybe I’ll break somethin’ just to see if you’ll come.”

The door creaked shut behind me before I could think of somethin’ clever to say.

Outside, the air smelled like wet leaves and woodsmoke. I walked back down the muddy path with her words echoing in my chest—soft as silk, sharp as flint.

And somewhere in the quiet between my heartbeats, I realized I’d be lookin’ for reasons to come back.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The morning stretched soft and gold over the village, sun filterin’ through a sky still patched with the pale hush of dawn. It’d rained heavy the night before, and now the earth smelled like moss and old stone, like every breath belonged to something older than me.

I took the same path I always did, worn into the hills by habit and need. A leather satchel slung cross my shoulder, tools knockin’ gentle against one another with each step. The hammer I used for roofs, the little brush I used for oilin’ hinges—all packed like I was some saint come to bless broken things.

Only I wasn’t goin’ to the chapel today.

The note had come from the baker, scribbled mess of ink sayin’ one of the herb women needed her ceilin’ patched. Didn’t give a name, just said “the dark-eyed one what don’t smile easy.” I knew then.

Didn’t tell myself that out loud, but my chest said it plain.

Her.

The woman who spoke like secrets. Moved like the rain followed her for warmth. I’d seen her twice now, and still she sat behind my eyes like a prayer I couldn’t finish.

Her cottage sat just beyond the low bend of the road, tucked behind a line of cypress trees with their roots grippin’ the wet soil like they feared bein’ torn up. Ivy climbed the corners of the stone, and a little row of jars lined the windowsill—dried flowers, maybe. Bits of lavender. Or bones.

I knocked soft. Once. Twice. No answer. I knocked again, louder this time, the wood thuddin’ beneath my fist.

“Comin’,” came her voice, muffled but steady.

The door creaked open and there she was, standin’ barefoot on the wood floor with sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her dress was a muted brown, plain as river mud, but it clung to her like she’d shaped it herself from dusk and silence.

“You’re the one with the leak,” I said, tryin’ to keep my voice level, casual. “I was sent from the bakery to patch it up proper.”

Her eyes flicked down to my satchel, then back to me. “Figured someone would show. Just didn’t think it’d be you.”

I raised a brow. “That a complaint?”

She didn’t smile, but her lips twitched at the corners. “Not yet.”

She stepped aside, lettin’ me in with a tilt of her head. The air inside her cottage was warm—herby, thick with dried thyme and somethin’ sweeter beneath it, like burnt sugar.

“Ceilin’s in the back room,” she said. “It leaks when the rain hits from the east.”

I followed her down the narrow hall, tools shiftin’ with each step. The floor creaked beneath our weight, and the walls held the quiet hum of a lived-in place—one made by hand, not bought with coin.

As I entered the room, I looked up at the corner where the water had left its mark—dark ring bloomin’ like rot in the ceiling. I set my satchel down near the edge of a low table and rolled up my sleeves.

“You don’t strike me as the sort who sends for help,” I said, climbin’ onto the little stool below the leak. “Let alone a village man.”

“I’m not,” she replied, movin’ to the table and startin’ to sort herbs into small bundles. “But I’m also not the sort who lets water make a home where it don’t belong.”

“That so?” I grinned. “Maybe you oughta carve that on a stone outside. Might keep trouble at bay.”

Her hands stilled a moment on the stems before resummin’. “Trouble always finds its way back. Whether you carve warnings or not.”

There was somethin’ in her tone—like she knew the feel of trouble’s hands around her throat and had stopped bein’ afraid of it.

I scraped at the softened wood, lettin’ silence settle between us, comfortable as an old coat.

I was halfway through tightening the last hinge when she spoke again.

“You always this quiet when you work?” she asked, voice soft, but not shy. There was somethin’ in it—like a cat stretchin’ in a sunbeam. Casual. Watchin’.

I glanced down from the stool I’d set beneath her ceiling, my sleeve wet with old rainwater and plaster dust stickin’ to my arms.

“Only when the job’s worth concentratin’ on,” I muttered, brows knit, screwin’ the final nail in. “And when the roof don’t behave.”

She made a small sound—almost a laugh. “Should I apologize on its behalf?”

“If it gives me a bit o’ peace, then aye.”

She leaned her shoulder to the doorframe, arms folded, basket still on the table behind her. The light from the window framed her in pieces—forehead, cheekbone, collarbone. Dust floated between us, and outside, the wind shifted the branches in her little garden.

“You’re better at this than the last fella they sent,” she said after a while. “Didn’t even last long enough to hammer twice before he said the house gave him a bad feelin’.”

“Most things give folk a bad feelin’ when they ain’t lookin’ hard enough,” I answered, setting the hammer down and wiping my hands on my trousers. “Or when they’re daft.”

“And what about you?” she asked, that same not-smile flirtin’ at the corners of her mouth. “You get any feelin’ from this place?”

I turned, finally facing her proper. “Aye,” I said. “That you’re hidin’ somethin’.”

Her expression didn’t change, but her gaze sharpened.

“I mean,” I added, before she could speak, “that you don’t talk much, yet you’ve got books stacked on herbs that don’t grow this side of the sea. Things bundled in your basket most folks wouldn’t know to pick. You knew I’d come back for the ceiling before I even told you I would.”

She tilted her head, lips pressing together. “I listen. I pay attention,” she said simply. “People show who they are even when they don’t mean to.”

“And what have I shown, then?” I asked, stepping down from the stool, slow.

She hesitated only a breath. “That you’re more than you say,” she said. “And you carry your grief like it’s welded to your spine.”

I stopped cold. And for once, I didn’t have somethin’ clever to say. Just stood there, feelin’ the weight of her words settle where they landed—deep.

She walked past me then, to the table, and pulled a small dark glass jar from the corner beside a bound book. Set it in my hands.

“For the cold,” she said. “Rain’ll catch up with you sooner than you think, and you smell like someone who won’t rest long enough to sweat it out.”

I looked down at the jar, then up at her again.

“You trust me not to drop dead drinkin’ this?” I asked, eyebrow cocked.

“If I wanted you dead,” she said plainly, “I’d’ve let the ceiling fall.”

That made me laugh, a dry sound I hadn’t heard in my own throat in some time.

“Fair ‘nough.”

She moved toward the door to open it for me, but I didn’t walk out just yet. Still holdin’ the jar, I looked back at her, searching her face like the name might rise from her skin if I stared long enough.

“You gonna tell me your name, or do I keep callin’ you Moonflower in my head?” I asked, the smirk creepin’ up despite myself.

She blinked at that. “Moonflower?”

“You only bloom at night. Got a scent that lingers. And I reckon you’ll poison a man if he ain’t careful.”

That made her pause. Then, a smile—real this time, curved and quiet.

“Don’t know if I oughta be flattered or offended.”

“Both, maybe.”

She nodded, opening the door wider. “See you next time, then… handyman.”

“Remmick,” I reminded her, steppin’ out into the daylight again.

“I know,” she said, leaning on the frame. “Still deciding if you deserve to be called by it.”

And then she shut the door.

But the air behind me stayed full of her voice. Of rain. And herbs. And somethin’ that hadn’t yet been named.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The woods had a hush to ’em that day—like even the birds were holdin’ their tongues to listen. Not a drop of rain on the ground, but the air was thick with damp, like the earth’d been cryin’ in secret. I weren’t lookin’ for her. Not exactly. But I took the long path from town anyhow, boots slippin’ over moss and roots, hands deep in my coat like I didn’t care where I was headed.

Truth was, I hadn’t seen her in three days. And it felt like somethin’ gnawin’ at the hollow in my ribs.

I told myself she was off gatherin’ or restin’, that folk like her didn’t owe nothin’ to folk like me. But the stillness where she ought to’ve been—it sat too long in the pit of my chest.

Then I saw her. Perched on a fallen log off the trail, elbow on her knee, chin in her palm. Her basket laid beside her, near empty, just a few stringy greens hangin’ on like stubborn ghosts. The wind played gentle at her scarf, and she looked like she’d been carved outta stillness. A woman built from pause and ache.

“Thought the trees’d gone and swallowed you,” I said, easin’ around the bend with a crooked smile tryin’ to pass as casual.

Her gaze met mine. Slow. Sure. “They tried,” she said. “But I told ’em I still had things to finish.”

A laugh threatened my throat. I let it sit behind my teeth.

“Was beginnin’ to think I imagined you,” I said, shiftin’ my weight through the soft earth. “Like somethin’ dreamt up on a fevered night.”

She looked me over like she could tell I meant it. “You dream often, Remmick?”

“Only when I’ve got somethin’ heavy on the soul.”

She didn’t answer that. Just scooted over and tapped the space beside her.

So I sat.

We let the silence settle between us for a time, let it stretch long and deep. She played with a blade of grass, foldin’ it in half, then again, ’til it split. I watched the way her fingers moved, careful but worn.

“I been thinkin’,” she said after a while, voice quiet but steady. “How a place can be full of people and still feel empty.”

My eyes shifted to her, to the way her jaw set like she’d swallowed too many truths. “This place do that to you?”

She shrugged. Not quite yes, not quite no. Then after a beat, “My home wasn’t kind either. But it was mine. Then it weren’t.”

I didn’t say nothin’. Just let her speak.

“There was a war. Not one with drums and soldiers, but somethin’ quieter. Slower. Took everything soft and left the bones.”

Her fingers stilled. Her face didn’t change, but I saw the weight behind her eyes.

“I ran,” she said. “Kept runnin’. Learned to talk like I belonged. Learned to walk like I wasn’t watchin’ every step.”

“You shouldn’t’ve had to,” I muttered, voice rough. “No one should.”

She looked at me then, like she weren’t expectin’ that.

“Folk back home say runnin’ makes you weak,” she said. “But it’s what saved me.”

I nodded slow. “I ran, too. When my brother died, I packed what little I had and left. Not just the grief, but… the hunger. Crops were failin’. Bellies were empty. We were ghosts by winter.”

She blinked, brows drawin’ together.

“Ireland’s a beautiful place, but she’s cruel when she wants to be. The year before I left, there was rot in the potatoes—black and wet, like somethin’ cursed the fields. Folks buried more kin than crops that year.”

I swallowed.

“I couldn’t stay and starve with the bones of my family.”

She watched me. Didn’t speak. Just watched.

“So I came here,” I went on, voice low. “Thought maybe fixin’ things might fix me, too.”

She tilted her head. “Has it?”

I looked down at my hands. Calloused. Dirty. Then I looked at her.

“I’m still cracked,” I said. “But I don’t feel so hollow when you’re nearby.”

Her lips parted, just a little. Eyes softenin’, like she didn’t know what to do with that.

“You always say things like that?”

“Only when I mean ’em.”

The breeze stirred again. Her scarf lifted and fell.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” she said, voice low. “What I’ve seen. I’m not made of mercy, Remmick. I’ve got sharp edges.”

“I ain’t afraid of a cut,” I said, leanin’ forward. “Not if it means gettin’ close to somethin’ real.”

She reached into her basket then, pullin’ out a folded cloth with a little vial inside—amber-glass, stoppered with care.

“More, For the rain,” she said. “To keep the cold outta your bones.”

I took it from her gently, thumb brushing hers. “You always takin’ care of me.”

She smiled, barely. “You look like someone who don’t know how to ask for help.”

“And you look like someone who’s tired of watchin’ folk suffer.”

She stood, dustin’ off her skirts.

“Walk me home?” she asked.

I stood too, tucking the vial safe in my coat. “Aye. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And I meant it. From the ache behind my ribs to the silence between her words—I meant every damn word.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Days passed as I began to see her more and more. Every time was like a dream I didn’t want to end—just like today.

The clearing sat just beyond the old stone wall, tucked where the trees thinned and the wild things dared bloom without asking permission. The sun poured itself across the earth like warm cream, catchin’ on petals and blades of grass, paintin’ everything gold.

She was already there when I arrived—kneelin’ low, sleeves rolled up past her elbows, fingers brushin’ through stalks of green like she were coaxin’ secrets from the dirt. Some of the flowers were in full bloom, heads high like they knew they were worth praisin’. Others drooped, wilted from the heat or time. Still, she moved between them with care, never avoidin’ the ones that’d gone soft at the edges.

“You’re late,” she said without lookin’ at me, voice light but pointed.

I knelt beside her, restin’ my tools down with a soft thump. “Was mendin’ a crooked stair, not flirtin’ with the baker’s daughter if that’s what you’re thinkin’.”

She smirked. “Didn’t say you were.”

“Aye, but you thought it.”

She shook her head, then held up a stem with tiny white buds. “Chamomile. You pick it now, when the sun’s at its highest. Any later, and it starts losin’ its strength.”

I took it from her, turnin’ the stem between my fingers. “Looks like nothin’ special.”

She raised a brow. “And yet it calms nerves, soothes bellies, and can ease nightmares.”

My lips curled. “Maybe I oughta be stuffin’ my pillow with it.”

“Wouldn’t hurt.”

The way she said it made me glance sideways at her—how the sun lit up her cheekbones, how the wind caught loose strands of hair and played with ‘em like a lover. She looked too alive to belong to the quiet.

“Which one’s next?” I asked, clearin’ my throat.

She reached out, pluckin’ a stem from the base of a nearby cluster. “Yarrow. Good for wounds.”

“That for folk like me who get in fights with doors and lose?”

She gave me a sidelong look. “It’s for those who carry hurts they don’t speak on.”

I didn’t answer. Not right away.

We moved in silence for a while, fingers grazin’ blooms, knees in the soft earth. I watched her more than I watched the plants, truth be told. There was a rhythm to her. A kind of stillness that weren’t born from silence but from knowledge. Like she knew exactly where she stood and why the world moved around her.

“Why d’you teach me this?” I asked finally.

She shrugged. “Because most folk pluck what’s pretty and leave what’s useful.”

“And you think I’m worth teachin’?”

She looked at me then. Really looked. “I think you listen when I speak,” she said. “That’s rare enough.”

My chest pulled tight at that. Not from surprise. From feelin’ seen.

“I like hearin’ you talk,” I said, softer than I meant. “Even when you don’t say much.”

She didn’t smile, but she didn’t look away either. “What else do you like?”

“Your hands,” I said before thinkin’. “How sure they are. How you never flinch when you touch things other folk avoid.”

Her gaze flicked down to the herbs between us. “And what if I touch somethin’ dangerous?”

“Then I reckon it’d be lucky to be held by you.”

The wind stirred again, rustlin’ the trees, bendin’ the tall grass in waves. A butterfly danced between us and didn’t land.

She exhaled slow, like maybe she’d been holdin’ her breath. “You’re a strange man, Remmick.”

“Aye,” I said, smilin’. “But I’m learnin’ from the best.”

We sat there till the sun dipped just low enough to cast long shadows. The air thickened with the smell of lavender and crushed thyme. She handed me one last sprig—something bitter, sharp to the nose.

“For the headaches you pretend not to have,” she said.

I tucked it behind my ear like a fool.

She laughed, the sound as soft as the breeze through yarrow leaves.

And I thought—if this were all I ever had of her, it’d be enough.

But some part of me already knew I’d want more.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The sun was dippin’ low, spillin’ orange light across the field like it was tryin’ to make somethin’ holy outta the ordinary. We’d wandered farther than usual — past the woods, down near where the blackberry bushes crept wild along the stone fences. Grass brushed at our ankles, and the air smelled like dust, crushed fruit, and late summer.

She’d been hummin’ under her breath again. I never knew the tune, but it stuck in my head all the same.

“Careful now,” she said, glancin’ back at me with that half-grin. “These brambles’ll catch your trousers and your pride in one go.”

I muttered somethin’ about her bein’ the real menace, not the bushes, which made her laugh — that soft, real kind that made my chest feel too small.

We settled on a slope where the hill dipped shallow. She sat cross-legged without a care, skirt flared, one hand restin’ against a warm rock. I sat beside her, knees bent, boots diggin’ into the earth. Not too close. Not too far.“You always find the best places,” I said, watchin’ the horizon melt.She shrugged like it weren’t nothin’. “Places don’t gotta be grand to be good. Just quiet. Just safe.”

I glanced at her, and for a second, she looked made of the light itself — all gold and shadow, like she belonged to a world I hadn’t earned yet.

“How come you never told me your name?” I asked, leanin’ back on my elbows. “Might start thinkin’ you ain’t got one.”

She chuckled, pickin’ a stem of clover and twistin’ it between her fingers. “Maybe I was waitin’. Maybe I needed to know if you’d ruin it.”

I arched a brow. “Ruin it how?”

“Some folk take your name like it’s a possession,” she said, serious now. “Say it too often. Say it wrong. Say it like they own it.”

I nodded slow. “And you think I’d do that?”

She looked at me then — really looked — and whatever she saw there must’ve settled somethin’.

“No,” she said soft. “I don’t think you would.”

The breeze picked up. She reached into her basket, pulled out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Bread and somethin’ sharp-smellin’, maybe a bit of goat cheese.

“Payment,” she said, handin’ me the bread. “For carryin’ all my baskets last week like a proper mule.”

I grinned. “Best damn mule you ever met.”

“You might be right.” She took a bite of her own bread, chewin’ slow, like she had all the time in the world.

Silence sat easy between us, stitched together by cicadas and the rustle of the grass.

Then she said it, casual as the weather.

“My name’s Y/N.”

I turned to her, blinkin’. “Y/N,” I repeated, like it was a word I already knew but hadn’t tasted proper yet.

“Don’t wear it out,” she warned, smirkin’ over her bite of cheese.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said, and meant it.

We watched the last of the sun sink behind the ridge, the sky bruisin’ with twilight.

“Y/N,” I murmured again, like a prayer I hadn’t realized I’d needed.

She didn’t look at me this time. But I saw the way her smile turned soft at the edges.

And that was enough.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The sun sat high, spillin’ gold all across the yard like it’d been poured straight from God’s own pitcher. Cicadas were hummin’, lazy and loud, and the stump tree in front of her little place offered just enough shade to make sittin’ there feel like somethin’ sacred.

She was bent over a wide wooden bowl in her lap, sleeves rolled to her elbows, grindin’ the herbs we’d gathered just the day before. Her wrists moved smooth, slow—like she was coaxin’ the medicine out with patience instead of pressure. The scent of rosemary and dry lavender clung to the air. I sat nearby on the grass, a small pile of weeds beside me I’d promised to pull up while she worked, though I’d barely made a dent.

Didn’t matter much.

I wasn’t here to work.

I was here to watch her.

To listen to her hum low under her breath, not a tune I knew, but soft enough to settle the ache that’d been coiled in my chest since the last time she’d gone quiet on me.

She reached for another bundle of dried stalks, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear with the back of her wrist.

“You done plannin’ on helpin’ or you just gonna keep starin’?” she asked, not lookin’ up.

“Both, maybe,” I said, leanin’ back on my elbows with a grin. “Can’t blame a man for admirin’ the view.”

She snorted, but her lips twitched. “If you’re tryin’ to be smooth, you’re slippin’, Remmick.”

“Me? Slippin’?” I let my accent thicken, feignin’ offense. “I’ll have you know I was voted most charming back home. ’Course, that was by a goat and my granda.”

That earned me a laugh. Not loud, but enough to stir the birds in the tree overhead.

I watched her as she went back to work, the sun catchin’ on her skin and her voice hummin’ again. My hand found a stray flower near my boot, tugging it from the grass. Yellow, scraggly thing. Not as pretty as the ones she kept hung dry above her stove, but it reminded me of her in some crooked way—sturdy and soft at the same time.

“You ever think about stayin’?” I asked, real quiet. “In one place, I mean. Lettin’ somethin’ root you instead of always runnin’?”

She paused, mortar stillin’ in her hand. “You mean lettin’ people in?”

“I mean lettin’ one in,” I said, twirlin’ the flower between my fingers. “Just one.”

She turned her head toward me, squintin’ a little like the light was in her eyes and not the words. “That what you’ve been gettin’ at this whole time?”

I didn’t answer. Just tucked the flower behind my ear with mock grace.

“What d’you think?”

She looked at me for a long time. Then smiled. Not wide. Not coy. Just somethin’ soft and real, like the kind of smile you give someone you ain’t afraid of no more.

“I think you talk too much,” she said, goin’ back to grindin’. “But I like it.”

I didn’t need more than that.

Didn’t need her to say the thing out loud.

Not yet.

The breeze picked up, stirrin’ the dust, the herbs, the ache in my chest that didn’t feel quite so heavy no more.

I pulled the flower from its place on behind ear and putting it neatly on hers and she smiles shyly.

And beneath that old stump tree, under the watchful hush of midday, I let myself believe—just a little—that maybe I weren’t the only one feelin’ it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The smell of sugar and sun-warmed fruit clung to the cottage like a promise. Late afternoon spilled through the kitchen window in golden sheets, catching in the little dust motes that danced above the wooden counter. The bowl between us was nearly full—fat blueberries she’d hand-picked that morning, now tossed in flour and cinnamon, waiting for their crusted cradle.

I stood elbow-deep in dough, arms dusted white, sweat at my brow and not just from the heat.

“Careful,” she said, reaching across me. Her hand brushed mine. “You’re foldin’ it too hard. Gotta coax it, not fight it.”

I glanced up.

Sunlight hit the side of her face, turned her lashes gold. She was smiling soft—barely there—but it pulled somethin’ straight outta my ribs.

“Aye,” I muttered. “Didn’t know you trained with the Queen’s pastry cooks.”

She snorted. “Didn’t need to. Just had a gran who’d bite your fingers if you got heavy-handed with her dough.”

“Sounds like a wise woman.”

“She was mean as vinegar and twice as sharp.”

I tried again, slower now, and she nodded her approval. The next few minutes passed with quiet hums and giggles. I couldn’t help but sneak glances—at the curve of her neck, the smudge of flour on her cheek, the way her fingers moved like she were tellin’ a story only she knew.

Then I caught her lookin’ at me.

We both froze.

Neither of us said nothin’, but somethin’ heavy and warm unfurled between us, soft as steam off a pie fresh from the oven.

She turned first, busyin’ herself with the tin. I took the chance to toss a pinch of flour at her back.

It hit her scarf.

She whirled. “Oh, you didn’t—!”

I grinned. “Didn’t what?”

She grabbed a handful and threw it square at my chest. The puff exploded, dustin’ my shirt and the air between us. I lunged with a laugh, and she shrieked, giggling as she dodged around the table.

We wrestled, gently. My hands found her waist, hers pressed against my chest, and when she stumbled, I caught her.

Held her.

Our breath caught in the same place.

“You’ve got… flour,” I murmured, brushing her cheek.

“So do you,” she whispered, staring up at me.

I don’t remember leanin’ in. Just that my lips found hers like they’d been waitin’ their whole life.

She kissed me back slow—like she weren’t sure she should, but couldn’t help herself.

Then it changed.

Got deeper. Hungrier.

She tugged my shirt, I backed her into the counter. My hands ran over her hips, then up, tanglin’ in her hair as she moaned into my mouth.

“Y/N…” I whispered against her jaw.

She didn’t answer. Just pulled me toward the bedroom like it was a decision already made.

The room was dim and warm, the last of the sun stretchin’ long through the window. She peeled her top away first, the thin cotton fallin’ to the floor. I watched her chest rise, eyes dark with want but soft, too.

I pulled my shirt over my head, dropped it, then stepped close.

“Sure ‘bout this?” I asked, voice low.

She nodded. “Been sure.”

That’s all I needed.

I kissed her again, slower this time, carryin’ her back until her knees hit the bed. We sank down together.

Our clothes came off like pages turned, deliberate and slow. My hands traced every inch of her, commitin’ it to memory like scripture. She gasped when I kissed her collarbone, whimpered when I moved down, when my mouth found the place that made her hips jerk and thighs tremble.

“Remmick,” she breathed, fingers in my hair, head tipped back.

I could’ve died in that moment and called it heaven.

When I slid inside her, she clung to me like she’d fall apart otherwise.

We moved together like we’d been doin’ it forever. Like we were born for it. Her nails scraped down my back, my mouth found her throat. I whispered her name like a hymn, like a confession.

She cried out when she came—legs locked around me, eyes wet, lips parted.

I followed close behind, buryin’ my face in her neck with a groan, her name spillin’ from my mouth like a prayer I’d never learned to say right.

After, we didn’t speak.

Just laid tangled in each other, the sound of our breath and the warm hush of evening wrappin’ around us.

I pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

She didn’t flinch.

Didn’t pull away.

And I swear—right then—I could’ve stayed there forever.

But forever’s a long time.

And fate, as I’ve learned, don’t ever keep still.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The first whisper came from the well.

A woman claimin’ her husband’d died after takin’ a tincture from Y/N. Said it were meant to calm his fever, but he didn’t see the next mornin’. She left out the weeks of coughin’ blood, the yellow tint in his eyes, the black along his gums. She left out the death already settin’ up house in his chest. No, she only spoke of the bottle. And the woman who brewed it. The quiet one, with dark hands and darker eyes, and a garden full o’ herbs no one dared name.

By midday, more tales grew teeth.

A child gone pale after tastin’ sweetroot she’d sold. A cow miscarryin’ out near the woods. An old man mutterin’ in his sleep that he’d seen a shadow slip past his window—and his joints ain’t been right since.

That evenin’, someone carved a jagged symbol into the bark of the tree outside her home.

The kind meant to ward off evil.

Or invite it.

I heard the talk at the forge. At the tavern. At the bloody baker’s shop, while I were settin’ a hinge right on their back door.

“She don’t age,” one man whispered.

“She don’t bleed,” said another.

“Heard her kiss tastes like rusted iron,” a third muttered, voice thick with ale and foolishness.

“She’s a witch.”

“She’s the reason the sickness won’t lift.”

I laid the hammer down slow. Let the nails clatter onto the bench one by one. Didn’t say a word. Just slipped out the back, fists clenched so tight I damn near split my own skin.

By the time I made it to her cottage, dusk had painted the sky grey and mean. I found her in the back garden, tendin’ her herbs like nothin’ was crumblin’ ‘round her.

“Evenin’,” she said when I stepped through the gate. Her voice soft, same as always, but her shoulders were stiff.

“You been into town lately?” I asked.

“Two mornings past,” she said, still kneelin’. “Why?”

I moved closer, my jaw grindin’. “Folk are talkin’. Sayin’ you’re the reason that man’s dead.”

She stood slow, wiped her hands on her apron. “He was already dyin’. The brew was to ease his passin’. I ain’t the one who filled his lungs with rot.”

“I know that. But they don’t. And they’re lookin’ for someone to blame.”

“They always are.”

I swallowed hard, shakin’ my head. “They carved a mark outside your gate.”

She turned to me fully then. “Let ‘em.”

“They’re callin’ you a witch.”

“And what do you call me?”

My throat tightened. “I call you brave. Foolish, maybe. But brave.”

She held my gaze. “I’ve run before, Remmick. I’ll do it again if I must.”

“Don’t,” I said, louder than I meant to. “Don’t run.”

She looked back to the herbs. “I won’t beg to keep a life I built with my own hands.”

“You won’t have to.” My voice dipped low. “But promise me—no more goin’ into town alone.”

She hesitated. “Alright.”

But I knew, right then, she were already thinkin’ of leavin’.

Three days passed.

She didn’t listen.

Said she needed sugar. Cinnamon bark. Said she’d be quick.

A boy came runnin’ to my door before midday, breathless. “She’s been hurt,” he gasped. “They said she cursed their land. Threw stones. She bled.”

I didn’t ask. Just ran.

When I reached her home, she was packin’. A bandage round her brow, blood stainin’ the edge of it. Her hands moved fast, throwin’ jars and vials into her satchel.

“You went alone?” I barked, stormin’ into the room.

“I didn’t think—”

“No,” I snapped, “you didn’t.”

She didn’t stop movin’.

“You plannin’ on runnin’, then?”

“What choice do I have?” she hissed. “You said it yourself—they’ll burn the source.”

My chest hurt. “Don’t go.”

She paused. Just for a moment.

Then kept packin’. “You can’t save me from all this.”

“I can try.”

That night, I left.

Didn’t tell her where I was goin’. Only knew one place left to turn.

Deep in the hills, past the boglands and the stone-faced ruins. A place folk didn’t speak of unless drink loosened their tongues. Said there was a woman there, old as death, who could grant power—if you paid the price.

And I paid it.

Gave up my last ounce o’ peace for it.

“Give me what I need to protect her,” I said, kneelin’ in the dirt.

The voice that answered sounded like it had no mouth, no shape.

You’ll have it. But you’ll never be what you were.

I woke with fire behind my eyes.

With hunger in my chest.

And power under my skin.

I ran back.

Too late.

Blood painted the porch. A poisoned arrow stickin’ out her side. Her breath shallow. Barely holdin’ on.

“Y/N,” I choked, fallin’ beside her. “No, no, no—stay with me, darlin’, please.”

“They came,” she rasped. “Said I brought plague…”

“We’ll leave. I’ll carry you. I’ll get you out—”

She smiled. Weak. “You’ve got to live, Remmick.”

“I ain’t livin’ without you.”

She tried to lift her hand. Failed.

And I broke.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, tears runnin’. “Forgive me.”

I sank my teeth into her throat.

She gasped.

Horrified.

“You didn’t…” she whimpered as blood began spraying a bit from the wound. “You didn’t ask…”

“I couldn’t lose you, Moonflower.”

The torches were comin’. Voices behind the trees.

But I held her tighter than I’d ever held anythin’ as she stopped breathing.

And I cursed myself with every breath.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Y/N’s Pov

I woke with my mouth dry and the taste of iron sittin’ heavy on my tongue.

The ceiling above me weren’t my own. It sloped too sharp, boards too clean, the scent of smoke and earth clingin’ to the beams like old ghosts. The air was still—too still—like the house itself was holdin’ its breath.

I sat up slow. My limbs moved strange—lighter, too light, like my body forgot how much it used to weigh. My skin felt tight over my bones, raw at the seams, like somethin’ inside me had been stretched too far and stitched back wrong.

The blanket slid off my shoulders.

I was wearin’ someone else’s dress.

Not mine. Not torn. Not bloodstained.

But that’s what I remembered last.

Blood. The color of it flashin’ under the moonlight. The ache of it tearin’ through my ribs. The sound of Remmick’s voice, tremblin’ as he cradled me like I was already gone. And then—

My throat closed.

I remembered his mouth on my neck.

His whisper. His kiss.

The bite.

And suddenly it hit—like a storm comin’ in sideways.

The pain. The fire. The way my body twisted from the inside out, like my soul didn’t wanna be here no more but the rest of me refused to let go. My hands clutched the mattress. Breath comin’ fast, sharp.

He turned me.

He turned me without askin’.

I swung my legs off the side of the bed, bare feet hittin’ cool wood. The room around me was dim but familiar in a way that made my stomach knot. It was his. It had to be. One of the places he used—clean, hidden, a house that didn’t remember its own name.

A chair was pulled close to the bed. A half-burnt candle melted into the table beside it.

He’d been watchin’ me.

Waitin’ for me to wake.

And yet he was gone now.

Good.

I didn’t want him to see me like this—split open from the inside, grief sittin’ heavy in my chest like a second heart.

I rose, legs unsteady beneath me, and caught sight of my reflection in the small mirror above the wash basin.

I froze.

My eyes—black at the center, rimmed in red like coals just startin’ to burn. My skin a bit discolored as early frost, no warmth left to hold. My lips, faintly stained.

I touched them.

They still felt like mine.

But they weren’t.

A sound left me. Not a sob. Not quite.

Somethin’ between a growl and a cry—like grief wearin’ new teeth.

I should’ve been dead.

That’s what I chose. That’s what I meant.

I told him to run.

I told him to live.

And instead, he tethered me to this life—this curse—with his own teeth.

My hand found the edge of the basin and gripped it tight.

The wood cracked under my fingers.

I let go, heart poundin’ louder than thought.

This wasn’t love.

This was control.

A man holdin’ too tight to what he couldn’t bear to lose.

He’d rather unmake me than grieve me.

And yet—beneath the rage, beneath the betrayal—somethin’ else stirred.

Somethin’ I hated more than him in that moment.

I didn’t feel dead.

I felt strong.

Feral.

Awake.

Every sound in the woods outside was clearer. The creak of the beams. The wind slippin’ under the door. I could smell the ash in the hearth and the echo of blood that once lived in these floorboards.

And that scared me more than anything.

Because I knew what came next.

The hunger.

The ache.

The war I’d have to fight inside myself, every minute, every hour.

All because he couldn’t let me go.

I stepped away from the mirror.

The next time I saw Remmick, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna kiss him…

or kill him.

So I ran.

Not for the first time.

But this time, I crossed oceans.

The Atlantic didn’t welcome me. It didn’t whisper comfort. It roared—salt-raw and cruel, like it knew what I was carryin’. Not just the hunger. Not just the curse. But the truth: I wasn’t runnin’ from a man.

I was runnin’ from the memory of one.

I didn’t look back when Europe disappeared behind fog. Too many ghosts in the soil. Too many names I couldn’t say anymore. Too many faces I’d borrowed and buried.

I took the long way to nowhere.

Lived beneath borrowed roofs and behind shuttered windows. Spain. France. Portugal. I spoke like them, walked like them, bent like them. But my voice never quite fit right. My skin whispered stories the villagers didn’t know how to read. And when they couldn’t read you, they made you into somethin’ to fear.

So I disappeared again.

City to countryside. From the coast to quiet farms. I slept in cellars. Fed in alleyways. Hid my teeth like a shame. Covered my eyes when they burned too bright. But no matter where I went, I couldn’t bury what he’d done to me. What I’d become.

Vampire. Woman. Stranger.

Sin.

Then came America.

I heard tales of it in the mouths of men too poor to own boots but rich enough to dream. A place where no one knew your name unless you gave it. Where you could vanish on purpose. So I boarded a ship under another name and crossed a second ocean.

They didn’t see me.

Didn’t ask what land I came from.

Only that I kept quiet. Paid in coin. Kept to my corner.

And I did.

I stepped off that boat like a shadow lookin’ for a body.

Years blurred. The states changed names and faces. I moved where the fear was low and the sun easier to dodge. Pennsylvania. Georgia. Louisiana. Tennessee.

But nothin’ felt like mine.

Not until Mississippi.

The Delta didn’t ask questions. It didn’t blink twice at a woman whose hands knew how to soothe fever, or whose voice carried like river water over stone. It didn’t care where I came from—just that I came with honesty and stayed with my head down.

And Lord, the pain here… it sang.

You could hear it in the soil. In the fields. In the bones of folk who worked the land like they were tryin’ to forgive it for all it had taken. The joy didn’t come easy here—but it came. It bled through laughter, through music, through bodies swayin’ in defiance of grief.

Here, sorrow didn’t hide from joy.

They danced together.

And for someone like me, that meant maybe I could belong.

I found a room behind a narrow house with warped floorboards and a window I never opened. Miss Adele, who owned it, looked me over long and low before passin’ me the key.

“You ain’t from here,” she said.

“No, ma’am.”

She nodded. “But you wear the heat like it’s home. Just don’t bring no trouble through my door.”

I didn’t make promises. But I paid in full.

I stayed quiet. Covered my skin when the sun rose. Fed when I had to—clean, discreet, never twice in the same place. I helped when I could. Tinctures, poultices, teas. I kept to myself. Most folk didn’t know my story.

Didn’t know I once had a man.

Didn’t know he turned me with a kiss and a curse and then begged me to thank him for it.

Didn’t know I used to love him.

I didn’t even know if he was still alive.

I hadn’t seen Remmick in over a century. Hadn’t heard whispers of him. Sometimes, when the wind shifted just right, I swore I could smell the cold of his coat, the copper of his breath. But that was just memory. Just the mind playin’ cruel.

He could’ve turned to dust for all I knew.

I prayed he had.

Still, I never let myself settle too deep.

The room I rented had no roots.

The name I gave was borrowed.

But the juke joint?

That felt like a church.

When Annie smiled at me and Stack nodded toward the dance floor, when the music rolled through me like a hymn with no preacher—I felt human again. I let my body move. I let myself forget. Just for a night. Just for a song.

And when it was over, I stepped back into shadow like I never left it.

They didn’t know what I was.

Not yet.

But I knew what they were.

Wounded. Brave. Alive.

Mississippi didn’t need my past. It didn’t ask for blood oaths or confession. It let me be.

And for the first time in over a hundred years, that was enough.

But peace?

Peace don’t last for things like me.

Because the past got claws.

And I knew, deep down—

if he was still out there, he’d find me.

What I didn’t know… was that he already had.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The air smelled of fried grease, wet moss, and wood smoke—the kind of southern night that clung to your skin like sweat and memory. I’d just left Miss Lila’s porch, her boy burnin’ up with fever again, and her nerves worn thin as dishwater. I’d left her with a small jar of bark-root and clove oil, told her to steep it slow and keep a cool cloth on his head. She didn’t ask what was in it. Folks rarely did when they was desperate.

The street stretched quiet before me, the dirt packed down by bare feet and Sunday wagons. My boots scuffed low as I walked, the hem of my skirt brushing the edge of dust and dew. The stars hung low tonight, strung like pinholes across a sky too tired to hold itself up.

I passed shuttered windows and sleeping dogs. Passed rusted signs and flickering lamps, the ones that leaned crooked like they were listenin’. I clutched my shawl tighter, the chill sneakier in the spring—evenin’s cool breath slidin’ down the back of my neck.

And then I saw it—the juke joint. It sat tucked behind a bend in the road like a secret meant to be found. Light spilled out through the cracks in the wood like it couldn’t bear to be kept in. Music pulsed low from inside—bluesy and slow, like sorrow had found its rhythm.

Cornbread stood out front like always, arms crossed, leanin’ on the doorframe with that half-grin like he owned the night.

He spotted me before I hit the steps. “Well now,” he said, voice smooth like creek water. “Evenin’, Miss Y/N. Came to bless us with your presence?”

I gave a quiet chuckle, noddin’. “Only if I’m welcome.”

He laughed soft, pushin’ the door open. “Girl, you family by now. Don’t need to be askin’ no more.”

“Still,” I said, steppin’ closer. “Mama always said it’s good manners to ask ‘fore walkin’ into a space that ain’t yours.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna question your manners,” he muttered, wavin’ me through. “Now get in ‘fore the music runs out.”

Inside was a rush of warmth—smoke, sweat, the sweet bite of corn liquor, and somethin’ else… somethin’ close to joy. The music crawled under your skin ‘til your hips remembered how to sway without askin’. Voices buzzed like bees in summer heat, laughter rollin’ like dice across the room.

I eased onto the barstool I always took—third from the left, right where the fan overhead spun lazy—and let my bag fall soft at my boots. Didn’t order nothin’. I never did.

Annie caught sight of me behind the bar, swayin’ easy as ever with a tray of empty glasses tucked on her hip.

“You bring what I asked for?” she asked, duckin’ behind the counter.

I reached into my satchel and handed her the cotton-wrapped bundle. “Steep it slow. Sip, don’t gulp. Should ease you through the worst of it.”

She winked. “Law, I owe you my life.”

“Nah,” I said, settlin’ onto the stool near the end of the bar. “Just owe me a plate of cornbread next time you cookin’.”

That got a laugh out of her, quick and sweet, before she vanished into the back.

I turned back toward the floor, just as Mary’s voice cut through the buzz of conversation like a blade through hushpuppies.

“Y’all hear ‘bout the farmer boy gone missin’?” she said, leanin’ into the group crowded ‘round the far end of the bar. Smoke was there, elbow propped, brows knit low. Two more men sat hunched close—quiet, listening.

“Wasn’t just him,” one said. “Old Mabel from the creek road said her nephew ain’t been seen in two days. Said his boots still sittin’ on the porch like he vanished mid-step.”

Smoke grunted. “I say it’s a man gone mad. Roamin’ through the woods, takin’ what he pleases. We’ve seen worse.”

One of the others leaned in, voice hushed. “The natives been whisperin’ it ain’t a man.”

That brought stillness. Even the music in the back room seemed to hush a beat.

“What they say?” Mary asked, brows raised.

“They say somethin’ old woke up,” the man said, voice nearly swallowed by the crackle of heat and distance. “Somethin’ that walks like a man, but ain’t. They leave herbs and ash circles at the edge of the trees again—like back in the old days.”

Mary scoffed, but it sounded unsure. “Old tales. Spirits don’t need bodies to raise hell.”

“They said this one’s lookin’ for somethin’,” he continued, eyes flickin’ toward the windows like the night itself might be listenin’. “Or someone. Been walkin’ the land with hunger in its bones and a face nobody can seem to remember after seein’ it.”

I sat quiet, still as dusk.

“Could just be some drifter,” Smoke said. “Folks get riled when trouble comes and ain’t got no face to pin it on.”

“Then why the sudden vanishings?” Mary pressed. “Why now?”

“Maybe it ain’t sudden,” I said before I could stop myself, my voice low and calm. “Maybe it’s just the first time we’re payin’ attention.”

Four heads turned my way.

Mary squinted. “You heard somethin’ too?”

I shook my head slow. “Just a feelin’. The kind that settles in your back teeth when the wind shifts wrong.”

They didn’t say nothin’ to that. Not directly. But Smoke nodded once, solemn, like he’d felt it too.

The conversation drifted back to softer things—music, cards, the preacher’s crooked fence—but I sat still. That ache behind my ribs hadn’t let up since the moon turned last. The way the air felt heavy even when it wasn’t humid. The way dogs stopped barkin’ at shadows like they knew they couldn’t win.

It weren’t just madness.

And it sure as hell weren’t random.

I could feel it deep.

Like breath on the back of my neck.

Something was here.

Something was comin’.

And this time, I didn’t know if I’d be able to outrun it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Remmick’s Pov

It started with the absence.

Not the kind that’s loud—grief flung sharp across the soul. No. This one crept in slow, like rot behind the walls. Quiet. Patient. The kind of missing that don’t scream. It whispers.

I walked to an empty room. No blood on the floor, no broken window, no fight to mark the leaving. Just cold air where her warmth used to linger. Her scent still clung to the linens. The floor creaked where she last stood.

I called her name.

Once.

Twice.

A third time—barely a whisper. Like maybe she’d come back if I said it soft.

But she didn’t.

And God help me, I searched.

I turned over every rock in that cursed country. Asked after a woman with a strange voice and steady hands. A healer. A ghost. I heard stories that might’ve been her—always just a breath behind. A girl boardin’ a carriage to Marseille. A woman leavin’ a parcel at a chapel in Lisbon. A stranger with dark eyes and no surname passin’ through Antwerp.

I missed her by hours. Days. Once, by a damned blink.

The trail always went cold. But I kept followin’. Because somethin’ in me—somethin’ older than this cursed body—knew she was still out there.

I stopped feedin’ off folk unless I had to. Couldn’t stomach it. Not with her voice echoing in my head, the way she looked at me that night—betrayal writ clear on every bone in her face.

I never meant to hurt her.

I only meant to save her.

But what I gave her weren’t salvation. It was a cage.

A century passed me like smoke through fingers. I lost track of time, faces, cities. Learned to blend into the edges. Changed my name more than once. The world changed, and I watched it like a man outside a window he couldn’t break through.

Then word came.

A dockhand in Barcelona. Drunk off his ass. Said he’d seen a woman walkin’ off a freighter bound for the States. Said she didn’t belong to nobody’s country. Said she looked like a shadow stitched to the sea.

That was all I needed.

I took the next ship out. Didn’t care where it landed—so long as it took me west. Toward her.

The ocean ain’t merciful.

The waves came like judgment. Ripped through the hull on the second week. Screams. Salt. Fire where it shouldn’t be. They said none survived.

They were wrong.

I clung to the wreckage ‘til the sky cracked open with morning. Drifted on broken boards and rage. Burned here and there by the time I reached land—ain’t proud of that. But grief makes monsters outta men, and I already was halfway there.

I moved through towns like a ghost with teeth. New York. Georgia. Tennessee. Small towns and big cities, never settlin’. I listened to whispers in back alleys and watched for her in every market, every dusk-lit chapel, every face turned away from the sun.

Nothing. For years.

But I could feel her.

She was here.

Like the heat before a storm. Like a name you ain’t heard in decades but still makes your gut twist.

It led me to Mississippi.

The Delta pressed down heavy on the chest, thick with memory and blood. And that’s when I knew—she was close. Her scent was buried in the clay. In the river. In the music that throbbed outta them joints deep in the trees.

I watched from the shadows first. Didn’t trust myself not to shatter somethin’ if I saw her too soon.

She danced now. She smiled. But I could see the armor in her eyes. She never looked back when she left a room. Never stepped through a door without pausin’. Still runnin’. Even after all this time.

And me?

I’d come too far.

Burned too much.

So I waited. Watched.

And when the moment was right, I’d step out of the dark…

…and she’d never be able to leave me again.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

There was somethin’ stirrin’ in the wind lately. Not loud, not sharp—just enough to make the back of my neck prickle, enough to keep my eyes glancin’ twice at shadows I used to pass without a care. Folks round here would say it’s just the season changin’. The cotton bloomin’ slow. The river swellin’ with too much rain. But I knew better.

I knew what it felt like when the past came knockin’.

It started with a weight I couldn’t name. Not sorrow, not fear. Just… a tightness in the air. Like the calm right before a storm that don’t care how long you prayed.

I was sweepin’ the porch when it hit strongest. Sun had already gone down behind the trees, but the sky still held that warm blue gold, thick and low, like honey drippin’ off the edge of the world. The breeze carried the scent of pine, of distant smoke and a sweetness I couldn’t quite place. My broom slowed. My breath did too.

I didn’t see nobody. Didn’t hear a damn thing.

But I knew. Somethin’ was watchin’.

I didn’t flinch. Just kept sweepin’, let the wind pull at the hem of my skirt and carried myself like I hadn’t just felt old ghosts shift under my ribs.

Come nightfall, I made my way to the juke. Same as always. Parcel of dried herb tucked in my satchel for Grace. A wrapped cloth of rosehip and sassafras root for Annie. Folks counted on me for that, and I didn’t mind. Gave me a reason to keep movin’. Gave me an excuse to slip past the ache.

Cornbread tipped his chin at me when I reached the door. “You late, sugar.”

I grinned easy, lifting the edge of my shawl. “Didn’t know there was a curfew.”

He stepped aside with a smirk. “Ain’t one. But if you keep showin’ up this late, I’m gon’ start worryin’. Com’ in.”

“Now you sound like Adele,” I teased, brushin’ past him.

Inside, the world came alive. Warm wood floors thrummin’ underfoot. Smoke curlin’ from rolled cigars. Sweat glistenin’ on cheeks mid-laugh. A fiddle cried through the room like it’d been born from somebody’s bones, and I breathed deep. I needed that sound.

I didn’t dance. Not tonight. Just eased myself onto the stool at the far corner and let my satchel rest on the floor. The room buzzed around me, voices rollin’ like riverwater.

Then I felt it again.

That chill. That soft press of a stare at my back. Not unkind. But heavy.

I didn’t turn. Didn’t let it show on my face. But somethin’ old shifted inside me. Somethin’ I’d buried centuries deep.

Not here, I thought. Not now.

I caught Annie passin’ and handed her the pouch. She squeezed my arm with a thank-you, unaware of how tight my chest had gone.

“You feelin’ alright?” she asked.

“Just tired,” I lied, soft. “Been a long week.”

She nodded and moved on, bless her.

But my eyes didn’t move from the corner of the room, where the light barely touched.

Nothin’ was there.

But I felt him.

Or maybe I was just tired.

Maybe.

I left earlier than usual, sayin’ my goodbyes with a smile that didn’t quite touch the bone. The walk back was quiet—too quiet for a town this close to midnight. I kept to the edge of the trees, let the dark wrap around me like a veil.

At my door, I paused. Looked over my shoulder.

Still nothin’.

Still that weight.

Inside, I lit one lamp and sat down slow on the edge of the bed, unwrappin’ my scarf. My hands were shakin’, just a little.

There’s a certain kind of fear that don’t come with panic. Don’t scream in your ears or rush your breath.

It settles.

Like a coat. Like a second skin.

And I knew that fear.

I knew it like I knew the taste of ash on my tongue. Like I knew the look in his eyes the night he chose for me what I would never have chosen for myself.

I leaned back, arms crossin’ my chest.

If it was him, he wouldn’t show yet.

Not ‘til he was ready.

Not ‘til I couldn’t run again.

So I did the only thing I could do.

I waited.

And in the silence, my soul whispered one word.

Remmick.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The grass whispered under my steps as I walked. Basket on my arm. Sun barely peekin’ through the trees. I’d meant only to gather herbs ‘fore the day grew too hot—rosemary, some goldenrod, a few stubborn mint sprigs for Annie’s cough. But the air felt… wrong.

Not wrong like danger.

Wrong like memory.

Like grief wearin’ another man’s skin.

The woods around me were still—too still. The birds had hushed. Even the wind held its breath. And I knew. Same way you know a snake’s behind you without seein’ it. Same way your spirit clenches when the past is near.

I stopped by the creekbed, crouched low like I was studyin’ the mint. But my breath’d already gone shallow. I didn’t need to see him to feel him. The air had thickened, the way it always did before a summer storm. Thick like honey gone too long. Like hunger waitin’ in a dark room.

“I know it’s you,” I said, not even botherin’ to turn. My voice didn’t shake. Not even once. “Ain’t no use hidin’ in the shade. You was never no shadow.”

No answer.

Not yet.

But I felt him in the stillness. In the hush between my heartbeats.

“Come on out, Remmick.”

His name cracked the air open like thunder.

And then—branches shifted.

I turned slow.

He was leanin’ against a tree like he’d been grown there. Pale, still, boots clean despite the mud. Hair tousled like sleep or war. Those eyes—red as dusk and just as dangerous. But his face…

His face looked like grief tryin’ to wear calm like a disguise.

“You always did know how to find me,” he said, voice low and silk-slick, but it cracked under the weight of memory.

“I didn’t find you,” I snapped. “You been followin’ me.”

He smiled—sad and sharp. “Reckon I have.”

The basket slipped from my hand, landin’ soft in the dirt. My jaw clenched.

“You survived.”

“Aye,” he said, never lookin’ away. “Didn’t think I would. But I’ve always been hard to kill.”

I laughed, bitter. “Too stubborn for death, too stupid to know when to quit.”

He took a step. Measured. Careful.

“I looked for you,” he said, breath catchin’.

“And when you found me,” I cut in, “you hid.”

He flinched. “I wasn’t ready. You left, Y/N. After everythin’—”

“You turned me!” I snapped, voice shakin’. “You took my choice and dressed it up like mercy.”

“I saved you.”

“You cursed me.”

Silence. Heavy and wet like the air.

“I woke up hungry, Remmick,” I whispered. “Starvin’. Scared. Watchin’ my own hands do things I couldn’t stop. You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t know what it would do to you,” he said. “But I couldn’t bury you. Not you.”

I took a step back. My heart was thunderin’ in my ears.

“You should’ve let me die.”

His eyes shone then—not from the red glow, but from somethin’ older. Somethin’ breakin’.

“I couldn’t,” he breathed. “I’d already lost everythin’. My brother. My home. And then you—” He stopped, jaw tight. “I’d have nothin’ left if you died.”

I stared at him, tears burnin’ the backs of my eyes. “So instead you dragged me into this hell and called it love?”

“I loved you.”

“I loved you too,” I said. “And that’s what makes it worse.”

His hands twitched at his sides like he wanted to reach out, but didn’t dare.

“You think I ain’t felt you watchin’ me these last few weeks?” I said, steady now. “Think I didn’t know the air changed when you came near?”

“I didn’t know how to face you,” he admitted, voice ragged. “Not after what I did. Not after you ran.”

“I had to,” I said. “You made me a monster. I couldn’t look at you without hearin’ the scream I let out when I woke up.”

We stood there, tangled in the ache of a hundred years.

Then he said quiet, “I didn’t want to own you. I just wanted to belong to someone again.”

I closed my eyes. And Lord, that was the worst part.

Because some part of me still did ache for him. Still remembered the feel of his hand in mine when we were both still human. Still remembered that look he gave me like I hung the moon crooked just to keep him wonderin’.

But ache ain’t the same as love.

“You got no right,” I whispered. “Not to this town. Not to me.”

His jaw flexed.

“Then why’d you call my name?”

“Because I felt you,” I said. “And I’d rather look the devil in the eye than let him haunt me from the trees.”

He smiled then, soft and bitter.

“I ain’t the devil.”

“No,” I said. “But you sure learned how to dance like him.”

He stared at me a long time.

And I knew, right then, this wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

But I’d bought myself a moment.

And in a life like mine, a moment might just be the thing that saves you.

“Go,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “Before I decide to hate you more than I already do.”

He took a breath. Then turned.

Walked back into the woods without a word.

But I knew that weren’t the last of him.

Because men like Remmick?

They don’t come to say goodbye.

They come to take back what they think belongs to them.

And this is the point when patience isn’t known to him.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

The joint was hummin’.

Music slid through the floor like syrup, thick with bass and heat. Somebody’s uncle was hollerin’ over a blues tune on the piano, Annie behind the bar crackin’ jokes while slippin’ flasks under the table. Sweat glistened on the back of my neck, curls stickin’ to my skin, and laughter rolled up from the dance floor like smoke. I was leanin’ into a conversation with Josephine at the bar, her eyes wide as she told me about a man she caught slippin’ out her window barefoot just before his wife came knockin’.

I chuckled low, brows raised. “And you didn’t slap him upside the head first?”

She rolled her eyes. “I had better things to do than waste my strength on a fool.”

“Amen to that,” I said, liftin’ my glass, though I hadn’t drunk a drop.

Then I felt it.

A cold ripple slid down the length of my spine—so sudden, it stole the breath right out my lungs. It weren’t fear, not quite. But the kind of dread that came from knowin’ something was wrong before your eyes could prove it.

I didn’t see the door.

But I saw Stack.

He was on his feet, jaw tight, walkin’ past me with that slow kind of purpose. Smoke followed close behind, his eyes narrowin’ toward the open entrance. Cornbread had gone quiet at the door, and that alone was enough to knot my gut.

Josephine kept talkin’, but her voice faded into nothin’.

My body moved on its own.

I stood, heart poundin’ like a war drum behind my ribs. The music didn’t stop, but everything inside me did. I walked past the tables, past the girls, through the perfume and pipe smoke and scent of sweat and spilt whiskey.

And then—

His voice.

Smooth. Mockin’. Sugar over glass.

“Evenin’,” Remmick drawled, like he’d been invited to church supper and meant to charm the whole congregation. “Lovely place y’all got here. Full of… soul.”

My blood turned to ice.

He was speakin’ to Cornbread, who stood stiff as a gatepost, eyes narrowin’ as the air seemed to stretch thin between ‘em.

“Think you might be lost,” Cornbread said slowly, not movin’ from his post. “There’s places in town for your kind. This ain’t one.”

“Oh, but I’m right where I need to be,” Remmick smiled, sharp and hollow. “Heard tale of music, drink, and dancin’. Figured I’d see it for myself. Can’t a man enjoy the night?”

His eyes flicked past Cornbread—landin’ square on me.

Like he’d planned it. Like he’d waited for the silence in my soul to find the crack just wide enough to step through.

“Y/N,” he said.

My stomach dropped.

Stack stepped in front of me. “You know this man?”

“I do,” I said. My voice came out steady, but my hands curled into fists at my sides. “I know him.”

“Name’s Remmick,” he said, glancin’ at the twins with a false-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Old friends with the lady. We go back.”

“Too far,” I muttered.

He took a step forward, and Stack shifted, blockin’ him.

“Easy now,” Remmick said, hands liftin’. “I’m just here to talk. That all right with you, darlin’?”

His tone curled around that word like it meant everything and nothin’ at all. The same way it used to when he wanted me quiet. Wanted me pliant.

“No,” I snapped. “You ain’t supposed to be here.”

Cornbread’s hand twitched toward the bat leanin’ beside the door.

Remmick chuckled. “Didn’t know you needed permission to visit old flames. Thought we were past pretendin’, Y/N.”

My jaw clenched. I stepped in front of Stack and Smoke, meetin’ Remmick’s eyes dead on.

“You’re pushin’ it,” I said low, “and you know it.”

He tilted his head. “I’m just tryin’ to make amends. Catch up. Maybe remind you of what we—”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “Not here.”

He didn’t shut up.

Instead, he smirked and said, “What? Afraid somebody might recognize what you really are?”

That was it.

I moved fast. My hand gripped his arm hard, draggin’ him back from the door ‘fore anyone else could hear. His boots scraped the dirt as I yanked him past the porch, into the woods just beyond the edge of the firelight.

We didn’t stop ‘til the juke faded behind us, til the only sound was the hiss of the crickets and the rasp of my breath.

Then I let go.

He stumbled back, laughin’ low.

“You always were the fiery sort,” he muttered. “Mouth full of ash and thunder.”

My eyes flared, shiftin’ to that color I only saw when my blood ran too hot. “Are you outta your damn mind, comin’ up in there like that?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t figure you’d come callin’ again. Had to make the introduction myself.”

“You could’ve blown everything,” I hissed. “You wanna waltz in there flashin’ teeth and riddles, but these people don’t forget what monsters look like once they get wind of it. You forgot that part?”

His face twisted, somethin’ cruel and wounded all at once. “You forgot I ain’t been welcome in any place for centuries. You found a home. I found shadows. You danced while I starved.”

I stepped close, close enough to see the red flicker in his eyes again.

“You don’t get to turn this on me,” I said, voice droppin’ into a tremble of fury. “You made me this way. You left me this way. And now you think you can show up with your coy words and puppy eyes and take what ain’t yours anymore?”

He leaned in, voice barely breathin’.

“You were always mine, darlin’. Long ‘fore the blood ever touched your lips.”

I slapped him.

The sound cracked like a pistol in the hush.

He didn’t flinch.

Didn’t raise his voice.

But that smile—the slow, dangerous one he wore like armor—slipped off his face like a mask too heavy to hold.

I was breathin’ hard. Fists clenched. Rain gatherin’ on my skin like it had permission. Like even the sky had been waitin’ for us to come undone.

“You don’t get to say that,” I seethed, chest heavin’. “You don’t ever get to say that to me.”

Remmick stayed where he stood—still, calm. Too calm. Like the eye of a storm that knew the ruin already circlin’ it.

“I reckon I just did,” he said low, almost kind. “And I meant it.”

My jaw shook. “You think this is love? You think this is some twisted soul-bind you can drag behind you like a dog on a chain?”

His brow ticked, barely. “No chain ever held you, Y/N. You cut every one yourself.”

I took a step toward him, finger pointed like it might draw blood.

“You turned me without askin’. You let me wake up alone. You watched me starve. And now you show up actin’ like I owe you somethin’?”

He didn’t move. Just tilted his head, watchin’ me unravel.

“I didn’t say you owed me. I came to see if there was anythin’ left.”

“There wasn’t!” I shouted, voice crackin’. “There ain’t! Not after what you did.”

He exhaled slow through his nose, like he’d been expectin’ this. Like he’d already played it out a thousand ways in the hollows of his mind.

“You always did throw fire when your heart got loud.”

“You got no right to talk about my heart,” I hissed. “Not after the way you crushed it and called it savin’ me.”

He stepped closer—just one step. Careful. Calm.

“You think I ain’t spent the last hundred years crawlin’ through the world lookin’ for pieces of you? You think I didn’t see the wreck I left behind? I know what I did.”

“Then why are you here?” My voice trembled. “Why now?”

He looked at me like I was still the only song he remembered the words to.

“Because even now,” he said, soft and razor-sharp, “you’re still the only thing that makes me feel like I didn’t die all the way.”

The rain started then—slow at first, then heavy. Soakin’ my dress. Mattin’ my hair to my face. But I didn’t move. Didn’t wipe the water from my eyes.

Because it wasn’t just rain.

It was rage.

It was heartbreak.

It was every scream I swallowed the night he turned me.

“You ruined me,” I said. “And now you want me to weep for you?”

“No.” He blinked once. Steady. “I want nothin’ from you you don’t give me freely.”

“You’re a liar.”

“I was,” he said. “But I ain’t lyin’ now.”

I laughed, bitter and sharp. “So what? You want redemption?”

He shook his head. “That ain’t a road I get to walk.”

The silence that followed was thick. Biblical.

And then, slow—too slow—Remmick sank to his knees.

Not like a man prayin’.

But like one beggin’ the grave to let him stay buried.

“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” he said, voice quiet and cracked around the edges. “You want me gone, I’ll disappear. You want me dead, well… you know better than most, darlin’. That ain’t never been easy.”

Rain slammed the earth in waves now, like it meant to bury every word between us.

I didn’t speak.

Didn’t move.

Just watched him kneel in the mud, pale hands open, head bowed like even he knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness.

His eyes flickered red in the stormlight.

Still beautiful.

Still dangerous.

Still mine—once.

And then the memory returned—

His mouth on my throat.

My scream breakin’ the sky.

The taste of betrayal before I even knew the word for it.

The night he turned me.

The night I stopped bein’ his salvation…

…and became his punishment.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t rise.

Just stayed there on his knees in the wet earth, eyes on me like I was a hymn he’d long forgotten how to pray, but still couldn’t stop hummin’.

“You don’t get to play the martyr,” I said, rain slidin’ down the slope of my jaw, voice low and level. “You don’t get to break somethin’ and call it love.”

His jaw worked, but he stayed quiet. Good. He was learnin’.

I stepped closer, slow enough for the mud to cling to my boots like memory.

“You think this—” I gestured at his posture, at the rain, the ache between us— “makes you smaller than me? It don’t. You still got teeth. Still got hunger. But now you got somethin’ else too.”

I let the silence hang for a breath.

Then another.

“My hand ain’t on your throat, Remmick. I ain’t pulled no blade. But you still follow, don’t you?”

His eyes flickered, faint red beneath the dark.

“You follow ‘cause you can’t help it,” I said, takin’ one more step. “Not ‘cause I told you to. But because I’m the ghost you ain’t never been able to bury.”

His mouth parted—like maybe he’d speak, maybe he’d beg again—but I beat him to it.

“You been searchin’ all these years thinkin’ I was the piece you lost.” My voice dipped lower, soft as a curse. “But maybe I was the punishment you earned.”

He flinched.

Just barely.

But I saw it.

Felt it.

“You ain’t on your knees ‘cause of guilt,” I said. “You’re down there ‘cause you know deep in your bones—I still got a leash on your soul.”

He looked up at me then.

Really looked.

And for the first time since he crawled back into my world, he didn’t reach.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t beg.

He just watched.

Like he knew I was right.

Like he knew that no matter how far I’d run or how cruel I’d grown…

…I’d always be the one holdin’ the reins.

I turned without another word, walked back through the trees, each step heavy with the truth we couldn’t outrun.

And though I didn’t hear him rise—

I knew he would.

I knew he’d follow.

Because men like Remmick?

They don’t vanish.

They linger.

They haunt.

They wait for the softest crack in your armor, then slip back in like they never left.

But this time, he’d have to wait.

This time, I wasn’t runnin’.

And I wasn’t lettin’ him in, either.

Let him kneel in the mud.

Let him feel what it’s like to want somethin’ that won’t break for him no more.

Because even monsters got leashes.

And some ain’t made of rope.

They’re made of memory.

Of ache.

Of the one person who walked away—and meant it.

v═════༺♰༻═════v

Taglist:@jakecockley,@alastorhazbin,

[allfearstofallto]

"The lady is so mean to Master Diluc," whispers like this are common place across the manor. You, the lady newly married into Diluc's fortune, are known for your tantrums. Your outburst where you're no longer a fragile and meek girl, but more like a monster in human clothes. Angry and screaming, even going as far as to throw things, injuring any and everyone in your path.

"I wonder why she even chose to marry him," another hushed voice would speak. But saying that you chose to marry him would imply that you were given a choice. Rather, you were forced to marry him. Although, who would believe you when you said that? Soft spoken and stoic Diluc? He wouldn't even hurt a fly. Most days, you were seen as the aggressor. The gold digger who just couldn't get enough and had even taken to hurting your husband.

"She's like a beast," the maids would say amongst themselves, never looking you in the eyes, never seeing the pain and sorrow that you were showing beneath all the anger. To them, you're a spoiled brat. But they never cared to see how you cried and beg to be returned home. How all you wanted was freedom from the man who had taken you, but no one was on your side. Frustration led to anger and anger led to outbursts, one's where Diluc would take the brunt of the force and make himself seem like the hero who tamed you.

"She can't even pretend to like him," they'd mutter. But you did like him. You loved him, even . But how long ago was that? Was it when he was courting you? Making himself seem like the normal, kind man who'd come to sweep you off your feet, to charm you and make you feel like a princess. His words were sweet and shy, possibly being what made you not pay attention to all the red flags. To all the issues that you brushed to the side. You were blinded too at one point. Blinded by the charisma of his mask. But his mask slips. They'd never see it. But you did.

[hyuny-bunny]

seasons // series

part iii

summary: your bestfriend minho will go lengths to keep you all to himself

warnings: drinking, attempted drugging, threat of violence, male masturbation, mention of past relationships and cheating

part ii • part iv

You felt the warm sunlight filtering through the blinds of the window of your apartment, skin hot the touch. It didn't help the heat of Minho's body pressed against you made it so easy to relax into him, you subconsciously pressed your face further into his chest as his arms laid around you lazily. Cuddling wasn't a foreign concept to the two of, sometimes he needed it just as badly as you did. You shift to get up from his grip feeling his arms tighten around you to keep you in his grip but the overwhelming urge to pee forced you to pry yourself from his grip.

He peeled one eye open to see you walking quitely to the bathroom, the soft scuffling of your socks against the floor as he trailed his eyes up to your ass watching a small curve of it peek out beneath the shorts, the shorts having rode up your body as you slept. He let out a soft "hmph" as he closed his eyes again, adjusting his position on the couch. He made no move to get off the couch wanting to see if you'd come crawling back in his arms once you relieved yourself.

He was met with disappointment hearing you make your way to the kitchen undoubtedly making coffee. The two of you shared a love of coffee that led to many study dates at cafes, hangouts at cat cafes (his preferred choice of leisure activities, and coffee shop hopping once a month. He sat up on the couch seeing you had washed up and decided it would be fitting he do the same.

You look up as he walks towards your bathroom, bed hair tossed, the sleepy grumpy expression on his face as his long sleeve shirt clung to his body hugging the outlines of his muscles that made you salivate.

"Coffee?" You called out to him.

"Is that even a question?" He responded in his morning voice that made you clench your thighs.

He typically only drank americanos to keep his sugar intake low with how much he danced and worked out, fortunately for him you kept a solid amount of americano concentrate in your kitchen. You made a small breakfast for the two of you; eggs, toast, some bacon, and fruit on the side. You weren't the best cook, having left that skill up to Minho throughout college, baking was your forte. He had no complaints when he'd come to your place to make dinner for the two of you only to be rewarded with a plate full of cookies you made before he got there, or when you decided to trial run recipes looking for his approval and feedback.

"Are you still going out tonight?" He asked looking up through his long lashes as he bit into his toast, the act far too hot for something so normal.

"Uh, yeah. Felix and Han are gonna come by later. Changbin is our DD and 'escort' as Han likes to say." You say with a soft laugh remembering the look of annoyance on his face the first time Han called him that.

"Where?" There was a hint of sternness to his voice that caught you by surprise.

"This place called Layla's, fairly new club but omegas get in free on the 2nd saturday of every month."

He hummed in acknowledgment as he seemed to fixate on something on his plate. You ate quietly, unspoken words lingered in the air, as you are about to speak he breaks the tension.

"Just don't do anything stupid? Don't go home with someone just because you think it's what you need to do." There was a certain bite to his words, that struck something sensitive in you.

"Are you implying I'm stupid enough to just go sleep with anyone?"

"No... I'm just saying you've had some pretty poor taste in guys before." There it is again.

"In what way?"

"How long did you stay with your ex after you found he was cheating on you?"

His words felt like the wind was knocked out of you. He looked at you sorrowful, regretting the words already

"My bad.. didn't know getting on cheated was my fault."

"That's not what I-"

"No, I got the message loud and clear. You think I'm too incompetent to make solid judgments around the people I fuck or date. I don't need your approval, Minho. I'm a grown woman and can decide what I want for myself." You could see the sting of hurt in his face. He stared down at his plate trying to avert the fire and hurt in your gaze wanting to just scoop you in his arms and kiss the pain of it away.

Instead he chose the grimace, muttering a quick sorry before saying he needed to go home. He grabbed his sweater and keys leaving you at the table still simmering in anger and hurt. He closed the door so gently you wished he had slammed it.

He let his frustrations get the best of him in a moment of weakness.

-

It was around 6pm when Han and Felix were knocking at your apartment. As thanks to Changbin for being designated driver, they all brought stuff for dinner so no one was drinking on an empty stomach.

"Why so glum?" Felix asked gently as you played some food.

"Minho said something that pissed me off... I just want to have a good night now. So cheer me up!"

Felix gave you a knowing look, he wanted the whole story. Minho wasn't the type to just accidentally say something hurtful, there were very few occasions where the two of you ever genuinely argued.

"He told me not to do anything stupid... then said I had poor taste in guys-"

"Is he wrong?"

"Not in that aspect, no. He's not wrong. What really hurt was his implication that I was too stupid to make good judgements of people and imply I was stupid for staying with my ex after I found out he cheated on me.." It came out so rushed there was no stopping the words.

Felix paused looking over you face, sighing softly as he smoothed a hand over your hair.

"He's wrong for how he said it.. That doesn't change the fact that he's just looking out for you. Read between the lines."

I nod softly as we start to eat, chatting up our game plan.

"Okay so Laylas first, and if that doesn't work out, we go to Wolfborne." Han said firmly as he shoved a dumpling in his mouth.

"What's at Wolfborne?"

He smirked, winking as he began to ramble.

"There's a secret club in the back of the bar, lot of hot HOT people. Most people only get in via invite or because the know a bartender.."

"How did you get in?" Felix asks.

"Our lovely little friend, Jeongin, is a barback on saturday nights." Han says while stretching his arms behind his back.

Jeongin was a music major like Han, he was an alpha, a bit meek but so very very handsome. You pondered the idea, he was a bit younger but not to be confused for inexperienced.

"Alright.. I'll bite." You said with a shrug, Felix nodded in agreement.

"Fuck yes, I'm gonna text him to put us on the list." Han said rushing to retrieve his phone.

We made our way to my room as Han dug through your closest to find you an outfit. Felix held your face as we sat in my bathroom as he worked on your eyeshadow. He was master at doing a smokey black eye, running the smudgy line across your eyes that made them look seductive yet fierce. He added the lightest bit of shimmer to the eyes so the light would reflect on them in the club. he dabbed your lips in a red color that made your lips kooky vampy and just bitten, a perfect contrast to your features.

"Okay, outfit is picked, thoughts?" Han said holding up the lacey black dress, completely see through but with the right underwear and accessories it could be tasteful. The cups of the dress had a nude lining so wearing no bra be no issues, the sleeves had a dainty ruffle strap similar to the the trim of the hem.

"Hot... Really hot," Felix said glancing at me, to confirm my reaction. It was a bit out of your comfort zone but the desperation to be spiteful towards Minho.

"Exactly what I need." You said letting a shaky sigh out.

After getting dressed and fixing your hair to sit nicely, the three of you continued pre-gaming until Changbin arrived. Once he was finished eating, the night began.

Minho was blowing up Changbins phone, texting him every minute of where you guys were.

ping

where are you guys going first?

ping

how many guys are there?

ping

what is she wearing?

ping

can you see her?

ping

has anyone approached?

ping

don't let her wander off alone

ping

stay by her side

ping

don't let felix drag her to the dance floor

Changbin rolled his in annoyance as the alpha demanded to know where she was at all times.

"Changbinnie!~ take my photo pleassee" His eyes drifted up to see the omega pleading with him to take her photo, he agreed deciding to take it on his phone to send to Minho. You stand posed against the bar top holding the cherry from your drink to your lips in a seductive way as he snapped the photo. He sent it to Minho knowing how it would rile him up.

Minho was laying on his bed staring up at the ceiling irritated by Changbins lack of responses. He was only asking to keep an eye on you, he grew irritated by the idea that you were out in a club with the prying eyes of other Alphas watching with only one thing on his mind. When his phone buzzed he looked down expecting to see Changbin telling him off that you were phone. What he wasn't expecting was to see you wearing that godforsaken black lace dress, holding a cherry to your lips in the most seductive way. He felt the blood rushing to his cock at the sight.

The sight of your fleshy thighs at the bottom of the screen, his mind running through the image of his face buried between them. His cock strained against his boxers at the realization that he could see the black lacey panties through the dress... The dress was so see through he could make out the entire outline of your body beneath the fabric, thanks to the flash of the camera. His eyes dragged up your body in the photo to the waist he often had a had around when the two of you were out in public. Finally zeroing in on your perky breasts that gave you the most glorious visual of them pressed to your chest. He wanted to drive down there, throw you over his shoulder to take you home, ripping that dress to shreds and bury himself inside your body.

He opted to stroking his hard length to the sultry image of you instead, picturing what it'd be like to pin you down beneath him, pumping you so full of his cock that it ruined you for any man that dared to pursue you.

The alcohol buzzed through your system as you danced with Felix and Han, feeling like you had gone to heaven and back. You body felt loose and any thoughts of what you originally came here for, had left your mind. You stopped momentarily whisper yelling to Han, "Going to grab another drink!"

He nodded as he looked back watching you disappear out of the crowd towards the bar, you looked over to where Changbin had been to see a girl was talking to him while feeling out the muscles in his arms. Shaking your head laughing you turned to waive the bartender over. Before the bartender could get to you, an unwelcome hand slid at your waist as you looked to meet the eyes of a man who was likely no more then a few inches taller then you, he reeked of cigarettes, alcohol, and smoothing musky that was unsettling.

"Can I buy a pretty thing like you a drink?" He asked as you pushed his hand away, he kept it smooth to your body as he slid it down over your ass with a snarl on your face.

"I don't take drinks from strangers, and I sure as hell don't take unwelcomed advances from them either." You said rolling your eyes and putting some distance.

"My name is Sejun, now we're not strangers." He said with a smirk as he eyed your figure. "At least let me buy your drink and keep you company till it's done."

You shouldn't but you allowed for it anyways. At least you would be getting a free drink out of it. The bartender took your order as Sejun began sizing you up, asking if you were alone, if you came with someone. Praying for any information that would indicate whether you had company.

The bartender dropped the drinks in front of him taking the cash, Sejun grabbed the drinks from the top of the rim sliding mine over to me.

"Well stranger, here's to a good night," He said smirking as he clinked his glass against us yours. As you brought the drink to your lips, you were caught off guard by the hand that immediately covered the drink and cause you to kiss the back of the hand. You irritation had peeked as you looked up at the stranger who had stopped you but you were met with shock when the hand took your drink holding it Sejun.

"How about you take the first taste?" The tall stranger held it to Sejun, the pieces began to click as you saw the all familiar look of someone who had been caught.

"What the fuck man-"

"Drink it. Drink it or I smash this glass right into your fucking head and drag you out back breaking every bone in your hands." Sejun took the drink hesitantly, bringing it to his lips as he drank the whole thing... Fear struck his face as he ran to the bathroom pushing through the crowd as the security clocked him, head directly for him.

This fucker had tried to spike your drink.

You finally saw the face of the stranger who had stopped you from a fate worse then death. The adrenaline pumped through you at the reality of what could have happened as you clutched the counter top of the bar.

"Sorry about that, I saw him stalking people in here and wasn't sure when he was gonna act. Let me get the the bartender to make you a new one."

The handsome stranger said as he pulled a barstool seat out for you to sit in. He was beautiful, dark hair cut into a wolf cut with soft waves that framed his pretty face. Lips full and pink that compliment the sharp eyes on his face.

"You alright? You look a little dazed." He asked as he pushed a strand of hair from your face.

"Yeah I... sorry the adrenaline of that situation might've just sobered me up."

"Sorry I didn't mean to frighten you but I couldn't just let that prick do something unforgivable." The bartender placed the new drink down, the stranger placed a napkin over it before putting it in front of me. The gesture of it didn't go unnoticed as he gave me a sweet look.

"Thank you. For stepping in like that... I don't know many people that would've or who would've have the vigilance to stop it."

"I can't take credit for human decency but I will say it gave me the perfect opportunity to approach you. I'm Hyunjin by the way." He smiled sweetly as he extended his hand out.

Chivalry, how sweet.

"I'm Y/N. Finally I have name to tell my story to my friends about my knight in shining black leather." You said playfully taking a sip of the vodka soda that settled your nerves.

He laughed at your joke, his eyes creasing in the cutest way, a stark contrast to what he looked like seconds ago when he threatened that guy.

The two of you casually talked, while Felix and Han looked around the room noticing it had been a while since you had left. They zeroed in on the close proximity of the stranger who sized you up, smiling ear to ear at everything you said. Noticing the way he dragged your stool closer to him so he could cage your crossed legs in with his, extending his leg to rest on bottom of your stool. His arm on the back of your seat as he leaned in to whisper in your ear as he pushed back your hair running the back of his hand down your exposed neck and shoulder. Changbin had glanced tom the dance floor to see Felix and Han gawking at something, he followed their gaze now settling in on the man who kissed you fervently.

oh fuck... minho is gonna kill him

-

part iv

[osamucide]

⊹ PUT ME IN A MOVIE

IF HE LIKES ME, TAKES ME HOME . . . ft. Nikolai Gogol

wc: ~5.8k

cw: NSFW—MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT—PLEASE READ ALL TAGS BEFORE PROCEEDING, snuff film maker!nikolai, alternate universe—no abilities, gn+afab!reader, 2nd person pov, siglai easter egg if you squint, stalking, implied/referenced dissociation, substance use/abuse, intoxication, drugging, abduction, choking, filming, restraints, graphic depictions of violence and gore, graphic noncon elements, mindbreak(?), spanking, object insertion (knife handle), knives/cutting, murder, reader.. dies(?)

reid: brilliant idea courtesy of my friend @berryzai thank u for planting this thought in my little freak brain. this was a fun little practice in suspense building and i would love feedback <3 .......if anyone would be tickled by a gross and gratuitous part 2 lmk lollll

It would happen to you.

At what’s felt like your goddamn lowest, too. There’s been a distant echo of a warning in your brain—perhaps from your mother or your father a long while ago; it rings now, still—that you hadn’t been heeding from the second the alluring silver-haired man placed himself with grace next to you at the bar. Be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go out by yourself. Don’t let your guard down. Sentiments you know to arm yourself to the teeth with—or, knew to, at some point, anyway.

You’re vigilant, always have been. Maybe aside from the going out by yourself part, but you could hardly help that living in a new city, sans friends and family, would prove more exhausting and isolating than you could’ve imagined in the technological age. No amount of text messages or FaceTimes or stupid Tiktoks sent to you from familiar, faraway fingers has translated into anything other than bitter little reminders that you’re really on your own this time.

Your social life has fallen completely by the wayside in light of your frantic work schedule. You’re never off the clock for more than twelve hours at a time, what with how criminally expensive your shiny, brand-new rent is—you could laugh to yourself right now if you were less delirious, thinking about paying so much for a room where you slept three feet from the shitter—and even if you did have friends, or nice coworkers, or a day off, would you even be able to muster up the dignity to bring anyone to your excuse of a place? You doubt it. You can barely stand being cooped up in there as it is, which is why, so often, you find yourself waggling your empty glass for the fourth time each evening at some bartender who by now recognizes you better than you recognize them.

And who could blame you? You have never felt so fucking alone.

You’ve been feeling caught in the spiraling downstream with all the other excreta Yokohama pushes from the pipes in the slums out into the ocean. It’s probably why you so eagerly welcomed the not-so-subtle curiosity of the man who introduced himself to you as Nikolai, proclaiming himself an avid drinker of your cocktail of choice—whiskey and whiskey—and commenting with enthusiasm on the glow of your skin even in the stale light of the bar. The apology for the awkwardness of such a compliment that followed it was just as bubbly; it was perhaps the first thing in weeks, if not months, that had made you crack a scoff of a laugh and raise your eyes to another human being outside the pretense of a monetary transaction.

He was stunning, really. You’d even felt lucky, momentarily, to have your attention stolen from your sorrows by this man whom you learned was visiting from Ukraine, was a filmmaker and photographer, was blind in one eye—it was true, it seemed, as his own skin was unblemished, perfect and not unlike porcelain, aside from a vertical scar plunging through his right eyebrow to below, just above his cheek, which did not detract from his beauty one bit, by the way. His teeth gleamed, wide and often, in low-contrast to his pale complexion when he tangented about his artistic endeavors which, according to him, explored the depth of the soul and the capabilities of the mind. He was fascinated with people, he told you. Fascinated, to a spiritual extent it seemed, with the billions of different possible human conceptions of the word freedom.

Freedom. It felt ironic now.

He could tell you had a certain depth, he’d said—one he liked to find and study in people. His testimony went like this: he’d have drinks and movies and a double bed for you to crash in, and it sounded a world more appealing than drowning your organs in liquor alone another night before slumping to your abominable makeshift-cell of a home before throwing up your hangover, sleeping a half-hour over the toilet, and heading in for your morning shift.

So, you agreed, on behalf of the fact that you’d felt fascinated by him, too. You noticed he’d gone on blabbering so long that you’d sobered up adequately enough to nod and accept, in what you assumed was your right mind, his invitation to go back to his place with him. In retrospect, he could’ve asked you to come over and do this—whatever was happening right now—and you’re not sure you wouldn’t have just laughed and resisted only playfully.

You’ve been so desperate for any interruption in the mind-numbing, feet-dragging routine that’s consumed your pathetic life that if you weren’t a dose of sedative short of completely panicking right now, you’d probably still be thinking this isn’t too bad.

But that’s silly, of course. You do, above all, feel like an idiot through your haze. You’d done everything right—everything except the going out by yourself thing, and that's how you've wound up in this man's dingy apartment, cuffed to the radiator with no less than three layers of tape wrapped around your head and ankles respectively. Alone. Alone is what you're used to these days, and it’s looking like it’s all going to come to a screeching halt the very same way.

You have no idea where he's gone. You just hope he’ll save the mutilation for after you’re dead.

Hey, you can forget about paying rent for that shithole of yours, at least.

His own's not a sight to behold, and you've gotten pretty familiar with it since you've woken up. He was showing you pictures before he left—before he knocked you unconscious, cleanly and with whatever he obviously slipped in the homemade whiskey and whiskey as far as your memory serves, but the throbbing, sore patch at the back of your skull that's obviously bruised when you lean it against the wall says otherwise. He must've hit you. But maybe he didn't. At your brightest and most alert, you can't say you'd be able to differentiate between blunt-force fog, roofie brain sludge, or the mixture of both.

The photographs started out elegant, really. Men and women alike posed solo, side by side, or in small groups, with knives and guns, mostly—pretty lines, sharp contours, silhouettes that prompted you to ask if he was a student. No, he'd replied, here for work; this is just a hobby. More men and women—a few recurring ones, including an androgynous-looking person with the most artful pastel split-dye you'd ever seen and a side profile to die for—in intricate shibari. A coworker? you'd asked; you could say that, he had replied with a wink. You'd drawn your legs up into yourself onto his bed where you leaned into him closer than could be considered friendly and you fawned. You weren't sure you'd met anyone like him. You hadn't met anyone in a very long time, it felt like.

The photos got strange rather quickly. Same photoshoots, same models, same weapons—but with blood. Bullet holes and brain matter and exposed bones. He has a passion for practical effects, he'd told you. See that little bit of brains there? he'd pointed out. Wet cauliflower rubbed with food coloring. Just like that. Easy! Blown-off skin was exceptionally simple to recreate using deli meat, you learned. You remember ogling a particularly convincing pile of innards with half-disgust, half-astonishment. He had photos of similar nature pinned up, collaged, ripped and repieced all over his water-damaged walls, all taken by him; there must've been hundreds. He’d love to do a shoot with you, if you’d be up for it, he said. He’d make sure you’re comfortable—show you just how simple it is to create such images with practical, do-it-yourself effects.

It hadn't started to sink in until too late just how practical the effects in those pictures might've been.

But by then, you were seeing two of him. When did he grow another trailing, milky braid? You'd reached out drunkenly to touch it, take it between your fingers, and there was two of your one hand, as well; there had to be, for when you looked down at your glass, now empty, there were two of those, too. You had four hands, and his two smiles were as charming as ever when he giggled and asked if you liked his hair. Yeah, you're pretty sure you'd slurred, maybe once, maybe twice, but after that, it's all dark. 

You should've scalped and strangled him with it.

Your guess is as good as anyone's how long you've been here, how long he—Nikolai—has been gone, if or when he's coming back.

But there's no room for guesses when you're hyperventilating manually through your nostrils just to keep yourself awake. You've been searching frenetically, yanking uselessly, screaming into plastic for at least a couple of hours now—long enough to be reduced to whimpering, rocking, and absent surveying of your surroundings. A fridge with the handle duct taped on. An unmade bed with black and white striped sheets stretched over it. Cutlery all over the countertop. Laminated floors curling up beneath the cupboards. A birdcage, tipped over and with no bird in it. Smoke stains on the ceilings. Boxes. Boxes. Cardboard boxes piled up next to the dresser and spilling out of the meager closet, among other trash. A video camera silent on a tripod in the far corner. A distinct and hollow smell that reminds you, for some reason, of your elementary school. A small analog television. All those photos, everywhere.

You've cried enough in your life to know the taste of tears. It's odd when they run, like raindrops down a window, across the tape and you find the salt inaccessible.

Please, succumb to dehydration, or starvation, or let the will just leave my body—who hasn't wanted to drop dead a time or two in their life? You just never expected these prayers of yours to be so immediate. So visceral.

You think back to the pile of innards in that photo. Gelatin, he'd told you. As if to prove himself, he bounced over to his kitchen cabinets and produced a tin mold that looked readily liver-like.

So much trouble, just to get you here. Inevitably.

The last words you remember him uttering to you—quiz time had preceded them—while he tucked your hair behind your ear and grinned toothily, don’t haunt you as much as they feel like drying cement in your stomach.

“At what point tonight did I start lying to you?”

Even now—especially now—you can’t say.

You’re rather annoyed with the squeaking, wheezing sound that pulses through the space until you remember it’s coming from yourself. Your lungs and throat. It’s getting easier to slip out of your body like that, the longer you sit here.

You hope the dissociative blessing will find you again at the right times.

It would be nicer—not to be so aware of everything right now. The metal digging into your wrists, your elbows and knees knocking against the humming radiator, the absurd way your cheeks puff up like a squirrel’s before your airways can remember you’re not allowed to draw breath in through your mouth anymore. You’re aware of the ache at the base of your neck and the nail marks you dig into your own palms and loads of other physical stimuli, in the form of nothing, barraging you from inside this apartment where nothing, dreadfully, happens. Nothing.

But again, your awareness does not reach your sense of passing time.

So, when he does come back, it might’ve been an hour since you’d woken up—or it might’ve been a few, or it might’ve been longer.

You don’t know.

“Oh, my friend! Terribly sorry to keep you waiting,” he chirps, as if you’re lounging on the couch with the next episode of your favorite show loaded up and ready to watch.

The tears come fresh when he walks over and squats down in front of you, at your eye level, muttering hey, hey like you’re a small dog, smiling the smile that was once charming—now it makes your jaw tighten, your breathing quicken, your back hit the wall.

“I promised movies, didn't I?”

You could mistake his tone for warm if you closed your eyes. You want to. You can't.

After regarding you and finding some satisfaction—you're not sure what in—Nikolai hops up, whistling. Your gaze follows him, dutifully, as if watching him will keep him at bay. That white braid swishes out of time with your breath as the little television crackles to life.

His rifling through one of the boxes produces a stack of DVDs in telltale white paper sleeves, each with its own permanent-marker-scribbled identifier like a love letter—you see these, make these out when he kneels back down in front of you, still whistling as he fans them like a deck of cards, like he wants you to pick one, any one.

But then he clicks his tongue.

“So impolite of me.” He seems to remember the predicament he’s placed you in. Setting the discs aside, he digs in his pocket. “Let's try something, okay?”

On its own, your head shakes side to side. No, is what the tape keeps in your mouth.

But it's a small key, and he's reaching for your cuffs—some sick part of you feels ready to forgive him if he just unlocks you and lets you go. Maybe he'll let you go. You would've stayed for movies had he not done this to you, you swear, unintelligible in your mewling—you’d been so lonely, he could’ve shown you anything and you would’ve stayed. Just let me go, you think now. Just let me go.

Before the tooth of the key slides in—so close—he tells you, "Nothing funny, now. This hand—" he taps the one closest to him, "—is for picking only, got it?"

He's frozen; you realize he's waiting for an answer. Your sight has never wavered from him, but you feel like you're zeroing back in on him and his expectancy from behind closed eyes as he tilts his head forward, toward you. Yes begins to form on his lips, like he's speaking it into you. You nod harshly. It hurts your neck.

But when the key clicks, a caged animal cannot be expected not to pounce.

Your free hand flies up to claw at his face, hard, unforgiving and without knowing what exactly you hope to accomplish. Nail tracks and fingertips find purchase as quickly and comfortably as they can into an eye socket. If your mouth was free, you'd be spitting. Shouting.

But he just peels you away and twists your arm in a way that forces your torso to follow and you screech into the tape; he twists, toward your chest and then down, and you're no match for him and his manic clenched teeth and the way he rises up to plant his foot upon your wrist, in the middle of your back.

Your chin hits the floor.

Something in your shoulder tears loose with a nauseating crack.

You scream. It's not loud enough.

“It's only gonna get worse if you don't just listen to me, sweetheart,” he growls, leaning down, grinding your carpal bones to dust beneath his heel.

Sweetheart. The first time he calls you anything other than friend is when it's really started. He's hurting you and the gutting certainty that he won't stop here is washing over you like a frigid wave.

Those pathetic, annoying sounds again—whining, whimpering. It's harder to remember it's coming from you when your eyes are screwed shut. If you close them tight enough maybe you can pretend this is all happening to somebody else.

“Obviously, that won’t work,” Nikolai says more to himself than you, yanking you back up, putting you back together off the radiator in a few motions you can’t keep up with before he lets you fall again.

You ragdoll.

You would like to think you might’ve had more fight in a situation like this one. But a steady ache is spreading from your shoulder down into your back and the angle at which he presses you into an arch reminds you your dignity is not something of his concern. You ragdoll.

“No, no, baby, we’re gonna get up now.” He drags you up by your wrists and hair and you groan and ache and try to ragdoll yourself into a bag of sand but he kicks your bound ankles and the negative spaces your knocking knees cut out until you’re sitting on your ass on the edge of his bed, in front of the buzzing TV, tears aglide in a new wave when he threatens you, with so little as a bruising grip on your face, to stay upright. “You’ll be okay,” he purrs emptily.

You’re past the liberty of choice, so the thin stack of DVDs hit the dresser with a papery thwack—all but one, which he jams into the slot before he crawls behind you on the bed. 

It wouldn’t have been so difficult to turn you into a lover, really. You wish you could tell him this while he sets either thigh on each side of your own, slides his arms around your middle, beneath your arms, the dishonesty of his fingertips beneath the hem of your shirt so welcoming. You still wish he wouldn’t have lied to you. You wish he wouldn’t have put drugs in your drink. You wish he’d take the tape off and let you wake up from the pain careening parallel to your spine and in your hand and you’d cover his arms with your own and tell him thank you, you’ve needed this, it’s been so long since you’ve felt physical affection from a human being that you think you could cry. His fingers wander between your legs and away again and you are crying. 

But Nikolai doesn’t want to turn you into a lover. The staticy screen hosts a shaky frame trained on where a cracked alleyway swallows up the foot of a brick building in shifty evening light and when it pans up to a window, there you are, impossibly, between a sliver of blinds. When you turn your head away—hearing those suffocated garbles from someone else’s throat—he creeps back up to your jaw, hard, like he wants to leave his fingerprints on the teeth they’ll use to identify you.

You watch yourself get undressed. You watch yourself wrap a towel around your waist and step halfway out of sight behind the frosted glass of your shower door. 

He gets up, periodically, to change the disc. Whistling, leaving you shivering in your bones, glaring sharply at you when you writhe until he guides your wet eyes to another film of yourself. And another. And another. And another. Ones where you’re on your way to work, on the bus. Ones where you carry groceries. Ones where your back faces him, on that barstool of yours. Ones where he gets close enough to touch you and then retreats. Ones where he’s picked up the convenience store receipt that slips out of your pocket. He uncrumbles it for the camera and scans the text and discerns your fate between your case of wine and bag of chips, laughing to himself. He’s a filmmaker. You’re his muse and we’re going to make the best movie ever, you think you hear him whispering to you or shouting at you with vigor when the television finally zaps dead beneath his touch. It’s going to be an exploration, he says, and he’s so lucky it’s you, who did everything right, sweetheart.

“How many days,” he begins, moving you like a mannequin to face him on the bed, your legs curling up uncomfortably as if they’re one, “did I follow you, do you think? Give me your best guess.” 

You desperately don’t want to vomit behind the tape, so you don’t make a sound.  

But he’s looking to you like he’s waiting for you to take your turn in the game, most likely unwilling to give you a leg up after your little outburst earlier. The tiny red crescents between his brows, barely visible beneath his snowy bangs, do not miss you. 

Chain link clicking, you lift up your one ten-fingered hand—no more four hands for a wider array of guesses—and present six shaky fingers. You think about going for his neck. 

Nikolai shakes his head as if he’s pleased to be winning. “Try again.” 

You spare a middle finger. Without looking at your seven, he shakes no once more. You don’t have to cast your eyes down to his arms, filling out the sleeves of his plain white shirt, to remember how strong they were around you without even trying to be. You’d have to be quick and you’d have to squeeze hard. 

Your thumb pokes out. 

No. 

The rest of your planning time rests like a marble between your last two fingers and when your ring finger flicks up you feel it slipping—slipping because what will you do after? You’ll have to choke him until he’s out cold. You’ll have to be certain he’s subdued before you’ll be able to waddle on your bound feet to his door to undo the latch and deadbolt—forbid you shouldn’t have enough time before you can make it out, pound on a neighbor’s door, get to a phone so someone, anyone can help you get out of here. 

Happily, Nikolai shakes his head once more. 

And you’re uncurling your pinky, making your way to a mockery of jazz hands. 

But before you get there, you lunge at him with everything left in your body and shattered hand—your ridiculously stringy reserve of willpower, funneled down through your dislocated shoulder and hours of frantic breath and trembling next to that radiator so that when your nails land this time in half-moons around his throat you groan; you get his jugular with two palms, one assured, one numb, insistent knuckles, and vengeant fingertips and his eyes widen so sweetly, his mouth twists down in the first and only displeased expression you’ll see on his angel-white face and you grit your hidden teeth and squeeze. You can taste the outside air and the blood from inside your cheek.

Frowning and flailing backwards, Nikolai gives you the privilege of a little performance. 

You think you could kill him before he kills you. You want to see the blue rise up his pretty skin. You grit your teeth. Your groan becomes a shriek. You squeeze. 

And when he’s on his back he pries you off. Does you one better. 

He’s grinning before he can get you off him—you’ve lost. You’ve lost a long time ago—when are you going to believe him? Does he have to spit it in your tear-streaked face? Surely you’ll understand, after his knuckles ripple into the space between your upper and lower jaws, now that he stamps his knee into the back of your neck in another choreography-perfect motion you never stood a chance against. Jazz hands against your chest, elbows jabbing your stomach. 

“It was thirteen, anyway,” he growls like he’s angry with you for guessing incorrectly. “Thirteen days. Feisty one.” You had no extra hands or mouth to make such a speculation, and now his heavy leg bears down on you. Hand on your back, grappling toward the curve of your ass, almost soothing. Almost. Your eyes are pressed into a blur of black and white stripes. 

Smack. 

It’s one of the kinder touches, still. 

“I don’t like having to discipline my subjects into submission, you know.” Nikolai almost sounds regretful. “If you’ll just—” Smack— “trust me to do my work, I can trust you to be good for me.”

Your spinal cord could snap like the head off a flower and he just smacks your ass, over, over. All your permission to make sound is trapped between his kneecap and his mattress, him and his rough hands, one of which knots in your hair and yanks, yanks until you can’t pretend this is nice anymore. You should’ve struck faster, gripped harder, shaken him with all your might but you should’ve done lots of things prior to now, and he’s the disappointed discipliner and you’re sorry, alright—you’re sorry you caused either of you all this trouble and you just want to go home. You just want to go back to your shithole apartment and let your chafed wrists heal and allow the long-term pain of a few dodged medical bills remind you that this wasn’t quite a dream, but at least you’ll be alive. 

At least you’d be alive. 

“Don’t fucking move,” he doesn’t bark at you. He’s not unkind. It’s a simple instruction. All the air rushes back in when he gets up, off you. Moves somewhere in the room to make a soft clatter. 

At least you’d be alive. But for what? To slog back to the machine? With all this added weight on you?

Would you want to be? You hadn’t begun with much when you crossed the threshold of the bar into the night he swept you up in. You had the stifling promise of work, home, work, home, feel alone, drink yourself to sleep, and you would be dumbly hopeful—no, pitiably lying to yourself to think anything more, anything different would be waiting for you on the other side of this. 

Another clatter, dull and short, sounds on the bed next to you and you dip with the weight of him following. From the clatter he chooses scissors—you know this because your shirt goes first, the cotton ripping, before your pants which too rip, rip, rip in places all over before he shucks it all, undergarments too, off you like the skin of a fruit.

At least you’d be alive. But what is it you’d aim to become after being Nikolai’s pretty little victim? A work of his art? Surely this isn’t something you want to carry with you, you think in the margin between rationality and ruin—between you and the door you’re not certain you’ll ever reach again. Certainly, not in one piece.

You roll over, exposed. He’s so pretty, biceps flexing, jaw clenching while he situates a body that is not yours into an adequate position where he can sever the duct tape binding the ankles with a few back-and-forth flourishes of his serrated knife like it’s a saw. This is a hobby, you remember. You wonder if he’s a butcher or a mortuary scientist or what he does to make his living and if he looks just as beautiful doing it. You’ve been granted the point-of-view of specimen. You can’t think of a perspective you’d rather watch him splay himself across your thighs from.

Your feet twitch to kick. Your brain doesn’t follow through.

“I told you you’d be comfortable, didn’t I?” He’s back to grinning that grin you’re holding onto. You can be a pretty model if you keep reminding yourself that if you weren’t weakened and restrained in his bed, that grin would look so inviting. His joy and passion are what drew you into him in the first place, after all. He talks to you, looks at you so softly while you feel broken. Isn’t that all you’ve been craving for someone to do? “Let’s get you comfortable, dovey.”

He kisses you—not rough, especially gentle in fact—over the tape as he’s tucking the same knife between your bodies. The kiss of an angel, the kiss of death. 

It’s not comfortable when the stainless steel handle finds its way inside you. You can’t even get wet, looking at him, seeming so patient now that he’s got you bending nice and far, and his teasing from earlier has done nothing; he’s so pretty and you would’ve wanted him before this. He didn’t have to do this to you. 

It’s uncomfortable, too, when he fucks you with it, slow at first—gradually faster. You don’t think you even moan, or whine. You just watch him, silky braid fallen in the crook of his neck, as he alternately studies your face, the knife, how you don’t react. When he fucks you faster, risking cuts upon his own hand, you let your eyes flutter shut, your fingers curling and uncurling subtly like they’re the only part of you that registers what’s happening. You don’t want to watch him anymore, going to the trouble. For you. 

He pushes it so deep for you, so deep you start to feel the serrated teeth. Your toes echo your fingers and finally, you give him sound in the form of a cry. 

“Oh, that’s good,” Nikolai tells you. A laugh bubbles through the words. 

Stop, you think you’re saying. Don’t. It’s anyone’s guess and his guess is more. 

So you leave. You remember this is all happening to someone who isn’t you—you have to feel it, but it’s not happening to you. You leave and you pretend it’s two of his fingers in you—they’re cold, that’s all—pretend the tape and the cuffs are some kink thing you were thrilled to indulge him in. Pretend you’re not concussed. Pretend your faculties can come back to you anytime you want in this little daze of yours—he’s just making you comfortable, he’s just making you feel good because your life isn’t so sad that you don’t deserve even that. 

He’s just making you feel good. 

Your tears have no end. They unravel out of you like string. 

“Don’t cry, baby,” his voice shakes with the speed. You jostle with his pace but you pretend you’re floating. “Don’t cry, pretty thing.” But he’s cutting you open from the worst place and when he grabs your chin again, his hands’ slick with his blood or maybe yours and you jolt back home into your body to find him again and the knife is still inside you. 

You hurt all over. He’s just making you feel good. 

Your sobs come loud and violent, withheld only by tape. He’s patient with you. He’ll be patient with you while you purge it, surely. You blur over, the string undoing faster and faster and he’s wiping your tears away, replacing them with something else, something red. It gets in your eyes. You miss his grin this time but if you were to see it, you would not think it the same one from before. 

When your body rejects the knife he scoops it up, licks the handle clean of all you’ve given him so far, with care. 

And he hushes you. 

“It feels good,” he reaffirms to you. “You’re doing so good.” 

You’re doing better than you ever have. You’re good—you must be. It’s the first time you’ve heard that in what feels like lifetimes. You’re good beneath his touch. He smears your blood or his blood down your cheek, down the tape, and you cry for him. Stop. Don’t. Be cruel to me again. It’s what I know. It’s easier to die when burning hatred is the one burying you. His affection makes your stomach turn. You loll into the palm cupping your face. You’re doing so good. 

And he’s grinning, sharp and wide, when your eyes roll back and forth. Back into your skull, forward onto him. Nikolai grants your wish when his fingers worm beneath, between the tape and your skin, while he’s telling you don’t scream or I won’t be so nice anymore and when he tears it away your face feels cold and you scream anyway—you scream for your crumpled arm and the violation and the knife life’s held above your throat come to materialize now in the third strike against him and there is a thick, flowing gash that leaves you feeling waterboarded as it seethes and gurgles its way through your teeth and around your shoulders all at once like a crimson harness to keep you flat on your back while Nikolai looks at you like you didn’t learn. 

“Ultimately—” His cloud-colored eyes burn as he towers over you like a god. Your god. The only one that can set you free, now. “—you made such easy little snuffbait,” he quips, running the blade once, twice along the cloth of his shirt before turning it on the thin, tender skin keeping him from your sternum. You and your first-floor housing and your melancholia. “Too caught up in your woes to notice the man following you around each corner for—god, weeks now. So little to live for anymore, sweetheart—it wouldn’t be so much of a shame to put you out of your misery now, would it?”

The look you give him must be delirious and begging; you swear a flicker of the most genuine sympathy you’ve ever seen crosses his face until he’s laughing, softly, rumbling to your ears like a fan’s whir.

“Oh, it would be such a waste of you,” he waves away. “Besides, I’ve already given you my artist statement.” 

His artist statement. From the bar.

Freedom.

His work—work, the word is bitter and foamy mixed with your blood—explores different conceptions of freedom.

Freedom. What could it possibly have to do with an innocent person, bound and drugged with their throat slit on film? What exploration is being made? What endeavor toward enlightenment are you when your mouth is too full of blood to ask him to stop?

Freedom. He’s been following you for weeks, if all he’s said is truthful, while you’ve been swirling in that downstream like a helpless fucking bug. And like a kid looking for an insectile test subject, Nikolai plucked you right up, splayed out your limbs, and stuck you beneath the microscope. Next he’d pin you, dry you, feed the story of your mortality to someone—his next victim, an empty roll of film, his own reflection, some god that wasn’t listening to you—and you would be another nameless face, a decomposing body, a snapshot demonstration of how well deli ham apparently mimics peeled-back human skin. A lesson in deliverance.

You haven’t been free in a long time. Perhaps, even, since before you moved to Yokohama and all your shit uprooted itself to the forefront of your mind and landed you on your back in the Devil’s bed.

“You should know well by now I’m interested in more than just seeing you bleed.”

Your hands reach out, trembling for his face like it’s salvation, while he leans to rest with his chin above yours. The Devil traces white heat, a bullseye for where he’ll stab into that tender skin on your chest, drag down, cut you open for him to begin the messy part of his project. 

You tilt ninety degrees and the red light of the camera winks at you. At least you’re not alone.

“I told you, I’m going to set you free.”

[just-trying-to-fangirl-in-peace]

Perfect illusion (Sauron x Celebrimbor’s daughter!reader)

-> in which you have to sit by your father’s side as Sauron coerces him into finishing the Nine, realizing just how blind you have been all along

Warnings: No romance, just angst. You marry Annatar (+ implied smut) when you don’t know he’s Sauron, so there’s all the emotional torment and consent issues that come with that. Uncomfortable touching (not smut) after you find out he’s Sauron. Manipulation, mind control and victim blaming as per canon

You sit in your chair, watching your father work. A familiar thing, which you have done a million times before. Before, however, there had never been a shackle around his wrist, or blood marring his brow. There had never been rubble scattered about the workplace, or the sound of battle coming through the window. Before, there had never been The Dark Lord standing behind you, his hands weighing you down as though the ceiling had collapsed upon you.

That is not to say that they are forceful. No, his touch is soft, as it has always been, his fingers brushing your hair gently, almost absent-mindedly. At times they reach your neck or your cheek, grazing your skin and sending shivers down your spine. You dig your nails painfully into your own hands to keep from trembling. It’s the least, even if the most inconsequential thing, that you can still do—to deny him this small satisfaction.

“Stop that,” Sauron says, his voice deceivingly gentle as he gives your shoulder a warning squeeze. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

Of course, that only makes you want to clench your fists harder. But you force yourself to open them, mindful of what might happen if you disobey.

“You once took comfort in my touch,” he says. If you knew no better, you’d believe the sorrow in his voice is genuine. “It is only comfort I wish to give you now as well.”

His knuckles brush your cheek, painfully tender and excruciatingly familiar. Though you’ve been trying to keep as still as possible, you cannot help but turn your face away, if only just an inch.

His hand stills mid-air, then returns to your shoulder. He takes a breath, quiet but long and deep.

“I have caused you suffering. That is true,” he admits, patiently. “But I assure you that this too shall pass. Once Middle-Earth is healed, and the people will see what we did here... your feelings will change.”

You can’t help how your breath quickens, chest trembling with anger. It only becomes worse when Sauron puts his fingers to your chin, coaxing you to twist your neck and look up into his piercing eyes. “You must know it pains me,” he says, “treating you like—”

“Like you have treated countless others?” your father intercedes in haste.

Sauron’s attention turns to Celebrimbor then, as your father had no doubt hoped it would. The whole time he’d been working, his eyes kept straying to you, as if to make sure you are still alive and whole. To your relief, Sauron removes his hand from your face. To your dread, he is now moving towards Celebrimbor, displeased with his remark.

“Like Morgoth treated me,” he corrects, hovering over your father.

You are not bound. You could, in theory, try to run. But you are not foolish enough to believe you could escape. Any such attempt would only earn you a shackle of your own, similar to your father’s. Though, you’re starting to believe that the cold bite of metal might just be more bearable than the silent imprisonment of your husband’s touch.

Your husband. The word twists in your stomach, carves holes into your heart. It all came so naturally to you when you spoke the vows and sealed the bond. Now, you can’t imagine how you got here. All you know are the facts of what happened, and even those no longer seem to make sense in your weakened mind.

You know who you used to be, when the world still made sense: daughter of Celebrimbor, the greatest of Elven smiths. You think his talents mixed with your mother’s magic may have resulted in your gift to manipulate materials in particular ways which do not necessarily come naturally. You know the mithril had refused to be coaxed into joining with the other metals without your intervention. You know Halbrand had been the one to suggest that you try it.

You know how easily he had endeared himself to you from the moment you met, and how confusing and sharp the pain had been when he disappeared without a trace. You know how quick you had been to let him into Eregion when he returned, despite Galadriel’s inexplicable request that you refrain from doing so.

You know the transition from Halbrand to Annatar had been unexpected, if not jarring, but in the end the pull you felt towards him was unchanged. You know there were touches, desire... trust.

You no longer know why. Because there never was a reason—not a true one, anyway. Only his deception, his mind games. But at the time, you didn’t know. At the time, it had made perfect sense when, one night, you had found yourself at the dining table, anxious about giving your father the news of what had happened a mere few hours prior.

Annatar was to your side, sitting at the head of the long table, while your father was across from you. He may be the Lord of Eregion, but he had insisted that an emissary of the Valar should take the most important seat. Yet despite your father’s deep admiration for Annatar, you were not sure how he would react.

“As you know,” you began tentatively, “Lord Annatar has been a close and trusted friend to me, these past few weeks. As he has been to you.”

“Indeed,” your father nodded. His unsure smile and knitted brow told you he was at a loss for what you were leading up to. You opened your mouth, but found yourself quite tongue-tied. You glanced at Annatar, who graciously took over.

“However,” he continued, lips forming a gentle, almost bashful smile, “after a time, we found that there were... deeper feelings between us.”

Though he was speaking to Celebrimbor, his gaze sought yours. You met it, heart fluttering as he wrapped your hand in his, resting them on the table in such a way that the new ring on your finger was in your father’s line of sight.

“Annatar has proposed marriage, father,” you finally say, turning to him. “And I have accepted.”

Your father blinked, eyebrows lifting in an expression of wordless surprise. When words failed to leave his mouth, Annatar took it upon himself to break the silence once more.

“My friend, I...” He trailed off, uncharacteristically hesitant in his choice of words. “I am well aware I should have asked for your blessing beforehand. Especially since things have progressed with such unusual haste, but—”

“Oh, nonsense!” your father burst out, as if finally regaining his senses. “Nonsense, my friend, this...” A short laugh bubbled out of him as he turned to you with a face-splitting grin. “Such wonderful news! Oh, my dear,” he took your hand in his, gazing in wonder upon your betrothal ring before he pressed a kiss filled with fatherly love to your knuckles. “You could not have found a better match,” he praised.

“The same is true for myself,” Annatar said, giving you that kind smile of his that never failed to have you return it.

Relief washed over you. All was well.

You’d be lying to say there isn’t a part of you that resents your father for giving you away so eagerly. He could not stop you no matter who you chose to wed, but with anyone else, he’d have at the very least warned you that the engagement had happened much too quickly. He’d have been more cautious of your betrothed, tried to determine whether or not their intentions towards you were true. But Annatar, in your father’s eyes, was of divine nature, and the thought of becoming kin with one of his kind had filled your father with such pride, it overshadowed all else.

You wonder if he is as ashamed of that moment now as you are. And of everything that came after.

You’re not sure if speaking the wedding vows had somehow allowed Sauron better dominion over your mind, or if you were simply too far gone by then. Little by little, more and more over time, you came to depend on your husband. When your father began acting strange and ill-tempered, Annatar alone knew of his ailment, and he alone could help him heal. He alone could provide the comfort you needed as you watched your father lose himself by the day, unaware that the same was happening to you.

He always knew when and what to say to bring you peace. He never seemed to leave your side, whether in the presence of others or alone. And you craved being alone with him more than anything else. He was an expert lover, so attuned to the needs of your flesh, it was as though he could slither beneath your skin and discern for himself which of his touches felt the most exquisite. Being near him was a delight in itself, but intimacy with him was simply addictive.

Warm morning light flooded through your window, and you wondered how you were supposed to ever leave this bed. Lying on your husband’s chest, skin to skin in the afterglow of your love-making, everything else in the world seemed so inconsequential in comparison.

“Do you ever sleep?” you asked, wondering suddenly how it had never crossed your mind before. He was always by your side as you drifted to sleep—most often spent from yet another passionate exchange—and he was there to greet you each time you awoke. Yet he was not of your kind, and an emissary of the Valar seemed to you above such things as sleep.

“It is not in my nature to sleep,” he admitted, fingers tracing gentle lines up and down your spine. “But I rather enjoy laying by your side as you do.”

Your heart soared at the quiet adoration in his voice. And before long, you found yourself aching for him once more. You brushed his neck with your lips, lightly at first, and then with more insistence, making your desire known.

“Again?” he asked, faintly amused.

You lifted your head, the smallest furrow in your brow. “Does it bother you?”

“Not in the least,” he replied. If that wasn’t reassurance enough, his lips caught yours, and he moved so that your body was safely beneath his, and even the thousandth time would not have been enough.

You can still taste his kisses—and they feel like ash. You remember how each time you became one, it felt better, but only now can you see how it made things so much worse. A corner of your mind, growing larger by the day, was always occupied by him. Each time you aided in the making of one of your father’s Ring designs, you did so with thoughts of Annatar. You know now why he wanted it that way—your craving for his touch, your utter devotion to him, seeping into the Rings the Power, one by one. You think you might have known even then. But he was always careful not to push you too far, to bring you back from the brink of suspicion before it ever started to take shape in your mind.

Even when the reality of things was undeniable before your eyes.

Your last night before finding out had been spent in a dreadful haze. Sleep felt more like a waking prison as you dreamt of terrible, yet distant things, hearing screams without seeing where they came from, seeing blood and ashes on streets you felt you should but could not recognize. You were grateful to wake up and see the sunlit sky beyond your window. Its light adorned your husband’s hair beautifully, the familiar sight of him sitting on the edge of your bed bringing you further relief.

“There you are,” he greeted softly, brow creased with a trace of concern. “You gave us quite the scare.”

“What—?” Your attempt to speak ended in a cough, as if you’d been breathing dust instead of air. Annatar left your side in haste, returning but a moment later with a glass of water.

“Here,” he said, putting the glass to your lips. You took it gladly, relishing the water soothing your throat. Once Annatar had helped you sit up and settle against the pillows, you asked, as you had meant to, “What happened?”

There was pity in his gaze. “Don’t you remember, my love?”

You shut your eyes, trying to grasp at figments of blurry images. “I was outside, I think. Mirdania was there. And you. And...”

Annatar shook his head, speaking as softly as if to a frightened child. “Earlier in the day, perhaps. When you collapsed, you were in the forge, with me and Lord Celebrimbor. When you sought to aid your father in merging the metals for his latest attempt at the Nine, your efforts over these past weeks took their toll on you.” He gave you a sympathetic smile, fingers brushing your cheek. “You fell right into my arms.”

“I did?”

His words did evoke images. The memory was there, somewhere. But the more you tried to reach for it, the more your insides churned.

“Be at ease,” Annatar soothed. “You merely slept through the night. I have watched over you all the while, and I shall do so until you are better.”

Better. Yes, you would get better.

But you knew, deep in your bones, that you were not well. The sense of dread within you refused to recede, lingering in the furthest corner of your mind even in the moments where you felt the safest. Something deeply rooted in you wanted it all to be over—the work, the forging, the ailments, your father’s as well as yours. You wished so desperately for things to return to the way they used to be before the Rings, it felt as though a great fist had clenched around your heart and refused to release it. But then again, before the Rings, there hadn’t been Annatar. And your need for him hurt just as terribly.

In the end, everything hurt. Everything.

“Are you in pain?” your husband murmured. You hadn’t realized tears were already sliding down your cheeks.

You broke into sobs.

He slipped beneath the covers and wrapped you in his arms. It became even harder to breathe, and you clung to him all the harder for it, desperate to find that peace that he had offered you time and again.

“Hush, my love,” he cooed, holding you close to his chest as you wept for reasons unknown. “All will be well soon.”

You had fallen into his arms, just like he’d said. Only, you hadn’t been inside the forge, but outside, just as your mind had fruitlessly struggled to remind you. You were there when the siege alarms began to blare and chaos erupted in the streets. When you saw your husband walk amongst it, you had run to him at once. Asking where your father was, wanting to stand united with your kin amidst the unfolding madness.

Darkness had engulfed your vision instead, shrouding your memory as well. He must have carried you back to your chambers himself, crafting an illusion within your mind to match the one in which Celebrimbor was already trapped.

It makes sense now. How desperately you had clung to the very source of your misery. One cannot satisfy thirst by drinking sea water, but you, in your foolishness, had drunk enough to drain the sea.

“You chose it,” he now tells your father, speaking of the suffering he had inflicted, “not I.”

And there’s a part of you that believes him, even as another screams inside you that his words are poison. You cling desperately to the scrap of reason within you which recognizes that his claims are atrocious—that it is Celebrimbor who forced Sauron to torment him, that he is the true author of his own torment. You watch in disbelief, feeling as though you’re falling through the floor, waiting for your father to refute Sauron’s lies as if hearing the truth spoken out loud will save you from shattering to pieces at the bottom of the abyss.

And you can tell he wants to. There is defiance in Celebrimbor’s eyes as he glances to you, the fire of his will still burning beneath the burden of his torment. But, slowly and surely, he tames it. Averts his gaze in shame.

“Very well,” your father says. “Give me the blame. Punish me as you see fit. You have already taken my city. But I beg you,” his voice trembles, tears gathering in his eyes, “let my daughter leave.”

A smirk tugs at Sauron’s lips. “Your daughter...” He returns to your side, gathering your stiff hand in his and thumbing your wedding ring. “...is my wife, Celebrimbor. It is only natural that she should remain at my side.”

You and Celebrimbor exchange a despairing glance. Your father, determined to plea for your freedom—you, fearing the consequences he might bring upon himself.

“Please—”

“Father, don’t—”

“No!” he cries out. “I all but pushed you into his arms.” Tears slip from his regret-filled eyes. “That is my fault.”

Sauron takes a seat next to you, his brow furrowed as if he couldn’t possibly grasp the reason for such grievances.

“She has given herself to me freely,” he says, your hand still trapped in his as he wraps an arm around your shoulders. “Have you not?”

You glare daggers at him.

“How could I have chosen you freely, when I never knew who you were?” you hiss. It does nothing to deter him.

“Why do you lie to yourself? You knew.” You shake your head. He nods his, insisting, “Yes. Deep within your heart, you knew.”

“Don’t say such things to her,” Celebrimbor pleads, “I beg you—”

“Such things as the truth, Celebrimbor?” Sauron asks roughly, irritated by the interruption. “Tell him, my dear wife,” he challenges, “that you never once suspected I was more than what I claimed to be. That you never felt the caress of darkness within my touch.”

You cannot look at him, or at your father. You cannot speak those words, however desperately you wish you could.

“Tell him,” Sauron insists cruelly, squeezing your hand to the point of near pain.

“I did,” you murmur miserably. Sauron loosens his threatening grip on your hand, pleased.

“Yet even as you cried yourself to sleep in fear of it,” he goes on, “it was within my arms that you took comfort. Because, in truth, you were not afraid of who I was—you were afraid of how little it mattered to you.” A last spark of defiance drives you to make the mistake of meeting his gaze, and his sickly sympathetic smile makes you shudder within his hold. “He needed to create,” he reasons. “You needed to be desired. And I needed you both.”

His arm is no longer around you, but the relief is meager and short-lived as he then cups your cheek, thumb catching the tears that have begun to fall from your eyes. He insists to hold his hand there as you flinch, screwing your eyes shut. A small sigh leaves him.

“Have I not treated you well?” he asks. “Was I not kind to you when you most needed it? A caring husband, a most... generous lover?”

“Hold your wicked tongue!” you all but growl, your head jerking with enough force that he retracts his hand. Your eyes fly to Celebrimbor, and see that he has shut his in great pain. Shame crawls under your skin. Sauron smiles in a mockery of bashfulness.

“Forgive me for speaking of such matters before your father, but it is only the truth. You must admit that. And it need not change.”

His hand returns to your cheek then, pressed more firmly to it, and you only now realize it’s the one he cut. You feel a warm wetness on your skin, and know that once he removes it, his blood, black as the pitch, would be smeared there, marking you even further as his.

“The Rings are nearly finished,” you say through gritted teeth. “You never truly desired me. What more use could you have of me?”

“Who says I never desired you?” he whispers, almost as if wounded. “I would not have made you my wife, if it hadn’t been my wish to make you my Queen as well.”

His voice is so alluring, so saccharine and familiar to your ears, it takes everything in you to remind yourself that every word is a lie. And if you grasp at reason, you can tell why he speaks them. Because of your involvement in making the Rings, you would always have some measure of influence over them, so it serves him well to have you under his control. But not only that. He would relish knowing he has subdued you to his will. That he not only ensnared the mind of the greatest of Elven smiths, but also claimed his daughter as his prize.

A storm brews in Sauron’s eyes as he senses your persisting reluctance. His fingers grip your chin, pulling you close so that his breath falls on your cheek as he speaks.

“You will say yes to me once more.”

You hate how determined he is to make it so. You hate how helpless you are to do anything other than glare back at him.

But what you hate the most is that you are not certain he is wrong.

[societyfolklore]

Dangerous Notes – Part 14

Title: Dangerous Notes – Part 14

Pairing: Mob!Bucky Barnes x Singer!Female Reader

Fic Summary: Reluctantly agreeing to fill in for her sick friend at a prestigious jazz club, The Armoury, Reader finds herself thrust into a world of old-world glamour and unknown danger. The club’s enigmatic owner, Bucky Barnes, has set his sights on making her a permanent fixture on his stage-and in his life.

Chapter Summary:  The events at The Armory are still weighing on you. And the limb of uncertainty still clings - Will Bucky will show up for the lunch he promised? To make good on his threat? But after what's happened who will come knocking?

Word Count:  3.5k

Fic Warnings: // Explicit Content // Mature Themes.18+, Minors DNI,Dark Romance, Slow Burn, Possessive/Obsessive behaviour, Violence, Smut (eventually), Emotional manipulation / subtle coercion, Mob activity.  Chapter Warnings:  Implied organized crime violence, over protective males, slight dick swinging (metaphorical) emotional upset..

A/N: Dangerous Note is updated Thursday – On a biweekly schedule.  Super tired this week so.. be kind... I'm having a moment :S

The apartment was silent when you woke, the kind of stillness that didn’t feel peaceful-just empty. You lay there for a while, your covers tangled around your legs, the morning light slicing through the blinds in pale, thin lines. Everything ached-your head, your back, the tension behind your eyes. It wasn’t a hangover exactly, just the aftermath of something too heavy to name. It had weight. Shape. A mood that stuck to your skin like old smoke.

The vodka was gone from your system, but you still felt distant. Slightly to the left of yourself. Like you were observing your body move through a room from behind glass. Your limbs felt sluggish, like your bones had borrowed someone else's sorrow and now they didn’t quite fit right.

Your phone sat on the nightstand. Dark. No messages. No demand either.

You picked it up anyway, thumb hovering over the screen before putting it back down with a soft thud that sounded too loud in the quiet.

You should shower. You should get dressed. Just in case. Because there was always a chance Barnes would appear. He hadn’t told you he was cancelling. But also, you didn’t want to reach out and confirm either-that just seemed like an invitation. Though you did wonder if maybe you should.

“You are not texting a gangster to make sure he’s alright.” Great. Now you were talking to yourself again. “Don’t be stupid.”

The thing was, there was still that gnawing, persistent thought in the back of your mind-what if he did show up? What if he was already on his way? You knew how he operated, with that quiet, relentless confidence. Barnes didn’t ask. He told. He appeared. He loomed.

Part of you knew there was a chance Barnes would appear. You couldn’t shake the thought. He hadn’t texted, hadn’t said anything definitive, but you also hadn’t expected him to. He didn’t exactly send confirmations. It would’ve been so easy to shoot off a text and ask. Hey, are we still doing lunch? But that would’ve felt like surrender. Like you were inviting him into your anxiety. Like you needed him to show up. You didn’t want to need him.

Still, you were tense. Hungover. Your nerves were crawling under your skin. You were too wound up to settle, and not wound up enough to cry. Every sound made your stomach knot. Every engine outside, every echo in the hallway, every car door slam sent your heart leaping into your throat.

You didn’t know what today was supposed to be anymore. The threat of lunch loomed. Barnes hadn’t formally cancelled. He also hadn’t confirmed. And after what happened yesterday…

After what happened yesterday… you were sure he wouldn’t come. At least not today. But then again, you weren’t even sure what had happened. Just that something had.

It’s between families. That’s all anyone had said. That’s all you knew. But whatever it was-it had been important enough. Bad enough. You remembered their faces: Steve, Sam, Barton. Barnes. The storm in their eyes. It was enough to make some of the most stoic men you'd encountered in recent memory upset. Rattled. Angry.

You stayed in your pajamas, pulled a stretched-out sweater over them like armour, and padded barefoot into the kitchen. You made tea you didn’t drink, staring at the swirl of steam until it faded. Let the music play from your speakers for exactly one song before it felt too loud-too much-and turned it off. The silence afterward felt like a held breath.

You opened a message thread to Kara. Started typing. Something light. Something meaningless. Then stopped. You’d felt guilty for being so cross at her-after all, it wasn’t like she really knew, about any of it, that’s what they’d told you. But did you believe them? You backspaced. Typed again. A meme? An inside joke? Something to bridge the silence? You deleted it again, jaw tight. Shut the screen without sending anything at all. 

You paced. Looked out the window when a car door slammed across the street. Imagined it was someone coming for you. Sat back down. Got up again. Your skin didn’t feel right. Your own apartment didn’t feel right.

You were in limbo again. Caught between impulses. Waiting for something. Permission? Forgiveness? A plan? A knock on the door? A message from Barnes? Anything that would let you take one clear step in any direction.

You weren’t sure anymore. Just that you couldn’t stay still much longer.. You lay there for a while, your covers tangled around your legs, the morning light slicing through the blinds in pale, thin lines. Everything ached; your head, your back, the tension behind your eyes. It wasn’t a hangover exactly, just the aftermath of something too heavy to name. It had weight. Shape. A mood that stuck to your skin like old smoke.

The knock on the door made you flinch so hard you nearly dropped your tea. You weren’t expecting anyone. But there was always a chance-always a chance it might be him. For a second, you held your breath, eyes locked on the door like it might open on its own.

Your heart thudded too loud in the quiet. You didn’t move. Not until a voice followed:

"Hey, it’s just me. Wanted to see that you were really okay."

Frank. Oh god Frank!

You exhaled, chest tight with the kind of relief that made you feel even more exposed.

"I’m fine, Frank," you called back, voice raised just enough. "Just... under the weather."

"I know what you said, but come on, just open the door. I have fruit tarts."

He knew you too well. You hesitated only a second longer before unlocking the door. Frank was standing there, smiling in that easy, open way of his, holding two takeaway coffees and a little paper box.

"Morning." Frank smiled at you, but there wasn't anything easy about it. "Figured you might want something a little special. Brought the good stuff."

He stepped past you without waiting for permission, already toeing off his shoes as he made his way into the kitchen like he always had. Like he still could. After all he was Frank. The one in your corner.

You didn’t miss the way his eyes scanned your face, and guilt coiled low in your stomach. He looked tired, not from lack of sleep, but from worry. The same look he’d worn the night you broke down in the staff toilets. The same look when you’d once left work early, eyes red and mouth too quiet to say anything about the anniversary of your mother’s death.

You sometimes forgot that Frank knew darkness too. He’d lost his sister to loneliness and grief, and that kind of pain made him sharper to the signs. Of course he came running when you shut yourself off.

"You didn't need to," you murmured, accepting the coffee anyway.

"Course I did, you dropped off the planet." He placed the box down gently, like he was trying not to spook you. "Just wanted to make sure you really were ok."

You sighed, softening. “Thanks.”

Frank watched you over the rim of his cup, his eyes shadowed with something heavier than concern. “Needed to make sure you hadn’t spiraled. You disappearing like this? And then coming in all high on adrenaline from this ‘gig’? You know how that looks, right?”

You didn’t answer right away. A knot was forming at the base of your throat- yes, when he put it like that. You could see how this all looked.  Here you were trying to keep people out of the mess you'd landed in and all it had done was trigger Frank into concern. 

You shrugged eventually, your eyes flicking toward the window like it might offer an escape. “I’m fine. It’s good. Singing helps.” You paused, then added more softly, “It clears my head. Lets me feel like myself again-even just for a little while.” You gave a faint smile, but it didn’t quite meet your eyes. “I’m just trying to take things one at a time right now. I’ve got the leave, might as well use it, right?” You didn’t say what else you were avoiding, but it hung between you anyway.

Frank gave you a look that let you know he didn’t quite believe you as he drank his coffee, moving from the little kitchen area into the living space. You could feel the weight of his gaze, not accusatory, just steady-searching. He wasn’t poking for answers so much as checking for cracks. Old habits from old grief. You knew the look. You’d worn it too many times yourself in the mirror.

He paused near the shelf beside your record player. You hadn’t put them away. The two new vinyls still sat where you’d left them, half-propped against the speaker like you weren’t sure if you were keeping them or pretending they weren’t there. His brow furrowed.

“You collecting again?” he asked, a little lighter now, like he was trying not to sound too suspicious.

Your stomach twisted. You hated how quickly your brain scrambled for a half-truth.

“Oh. They’re…” You hesitated, swallowing around the tension in your throat. “Not mine. Someone gave them to me. Think of it like a tip.”

Frank raised an eyebrow, one hand resting on the back of your couch. “A tip?” he repeated, more sceptical now.

You didn’t look at him. Just shrugged like it didn’t matter, like it was nothing at all. “Yeah, at the venue. Like, after a set. People get sentimental sometimes.”

He didn’t press further, but you could feel it again-that pause, that click behind his eyes as he quietly did the math. He was too smart not to. But he was also kind enough to let it go.

For now.

You wished he hadn’t noticed them. Wished you’d shoved them in a drawer, hidden them under your bed, done something. But you hadn’t, and now they were part of this room, part of the air between you. Another question neither of you wanted to ask aloud. But his attention soon flicked to the muted TV behind you. He squinted, leaning forward a little.

“Wait a second. Isn’t that...?”

You turned, almost dropping your coffee as your eyes locked onto the news ticker crawling along the bottom of the screen. Your hand scrambled for the remote.

A local reporter stood outside a shopfront you recognized. Not well, but enough. It was one of those vague places you’d passed on sleepless nights wandering too far from home, following your thoughts instead of streets. A place that now looked stark and sharp under the lens of a camera crew.

The red ticker scrolled across the bottom again as you unmuted the broadcast.

"Overnight activity causes disruption in dockyard transit-sources suggest potential mob involvement."

The air left your lungs like you’d been punched.

That was it. That was what they’d been dealing with yesterday.

That’s what had made Barnes look like he was one breath away from drawing blood. What had shaken Pietro. What had made Steve and Sam look like stone.

You hadn’t just wandered into something dark. You’d wandered into something active.

You weren’t even part of the storm. Just a shadow in its path. Caught in the wake. Never meant to see it. A bystander with front-row seats to something you hadn’t bought a ticket for.

Your fingers were clenched too tightly around the remote. Your jaw ached. You hadn’t even realized you’d stopped breathing.

Frank exhaled sharply. “God, you’d think New York would be done with gangsters by now.”

“Yeah.” The word slipped out with your breath, almost fragile. You loosened your grip on the remote, fingers tingling. The image blurred as your focus fell away, replaced by the ringing in your ears and the sudden sharp ache behind your eyes.

Your phone buzzed.

But it wasn’t him. Just a notification.

You checked the time. It was already well past noon.

Frank looked over. “Wanna go out? Get a bite or something?”

“I… I’ve got the gig.” That wasn't for hours though. 

“Right.” He didn’t say more, but the tightness in his jaw returned.

“Come on,” he said after a beat already moving to get his shoes back on. “Get out of your pjs, put on something comfortable. We’ll go get a sandwich, maybe even head to Prospect Park, walk around, get some air. You look like you could use it.”

You nodded slowly. A bit of normal couldn’t hurt. Maybe it would settle the shaking feeling in your chest.

Frank headed to the bathroom. You went to grab your coat.

Before you heard another knock.

You froze mid-step, your coat half-on, breath locking in your chest.

Of course. Of course there’d be a knock now.

You weren’t stupid. Somewhere in your gut, you’d been expecting this all morning, no matter how much you told yourself otherwise. Not him, you tried to insist. But your mind refused to listen.

Still you hesitated.

It couldn’t be. Could it??

Another knock. Sharper this time.

Your spine went rigid, the old nerves sparking back to life before your body could catch up. There was no gentle rhythm, no familiar pause. This one had weight behind it. Precision. Like a question that already knew its answer.

Your breath caught, fingers curling slightly at your sides. For a split second, you thought-  Him. Bucky...  Of course it would be him. Of course he’d show up now. You couldn’t stop the image in your head. Barnes standing there, probably still preoccupied with whatever had gone down at the docks. Angry. Tense. Wanting control over something and you’d be it.

You stepped cautiously toward the door, still unsure whether you were hoping or dreading the truth.

You cracked it open just a sliver.

Sam Wilson stood on the other side, dressed casual. Hoodie and jacket over broad shoulders, hand half-raised like he’d been about to knock again. A small box in his other hand. You expected him to be in a suit. It was almost strange to see him so relaxed. Though, there wasn't anything truly relaxed about him.

“Hey,” he said, voice low. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just wanted to drop something off.”

You opened the door wider, blinking at him in surprise. "Sam... I wasn’t expecting-"

He offered the box with a half-shrug. “Barnes didn’t know if he could make lunch,” he said. Sam paused, like he was going to explain more but stopped. “But he hadn’t wanted to send his apologies and regrets empty-handed.”

Before you could respond, Frank stepped up behind you, his presence a quiet wall of defence.

Sam’s eyes flicked past you. “Friend of yours?” His voice was cool. There was a weight behind the words, like he was fitting a piece into a puzzle he didn’t quite trust.

Frank had emerged from the bathroom, still drying his hands on a small towel.

“Yeah,” Frank said before you could answer. “Who’s asking?”

You sighed. “This is Sam." You tried to keep it easy. "He works at the venue.”

Frank’s brow creased. “Does he?” You could almost tell Frank was trying to work out if Sam had been the one to give you the records. "Must be some venue to drop by your home."

Sam’s mouth thinned. “Just dropping something off."

The air between them shifted. Neither of them moved, but you could feel it-that subtle, masculine measuring. Not aggressive, but alert. Two men squaring off quietly in a hallway, trying to figure out what the other meant without saying it.

You cleared your throat. “Sam, this is Frank. He’s a friend. From my actual job.”

Sam nodded once. “Ah. Nothing teacher. Got it.”

He handed you the box. You took it without opening it. Great. What was it going to be now?

“Boss picked it,” Sam offered.

That made something in your chest flutter uncomfortably.

“Tell him thanks,” you said softly.

Sam turned to go, but he paused and looked back at Frank. “She’s got people looking out for her, huh?”

Frank straightened. “She always has.”

Sam gave a small, unreadable smile. “Good. Always good to have an extra pair of eyes.”

He left without another word. Though you weren't sure what that last part meant.

You closed the door with a quiet click, box still in your hands. It felt heavier now, somehow, like the weight of it had changed since you'd first taken it.

Frank stared at it. At you. You could see it in his face; worry, confusion, a shadow of something sadder. That expression cut deeper than anything he could’ve said.

“What was that?”

You didn’t answer. Not right away. What were you meant to even say? The truth would only make everything worse.

Frank moved toward the counter, his footsteps deliberate. The concern he wore was no longer passing. It was anchored, growing heavier with each breath. “You can’t tell me that wasn’t something.”

You didn’t answer. Because he was right. Because it was something-just not the kind of something he could protect you from. Not something you could name without inviting it deeper into your life.

You just set the box down like it might burn you, hands stiff, jaw clenched.

“It’s just a gift. For a job well done.”

“Right.” Frank scoffed. “Because every job I’ve had ends with a boss sending someone like that to deliver whatever that is." His eyes hadn’t left the box.

You looked at him, pleading, already knowing it wasn’t enough. “Frank, I can’t-”

“Can’t what?” His voice cracked. Not angry, but desperate, like he was standing at the edge of something and reaching for you across it. “Tell me what the hell’s going on, because I’m doing the math, and it doesn’t add up. You’re spiraling. You're lying. And I don’t like what I’m seeing. It scares me.”

You turned away, trying to catch your breath. You felt the weight of your silence more than ever.

He stepped closer. “I’ve seen you drown before. I’m not watching it happen again. Please-whatever this is, whatever you’ve gotten into-just tell me.”

You wanted to. God, you wanted to. But what could you say? That Bucky Barnes had his claws in your life? That you were now going to be a woman wearing mobster-picked bracelets in a borrowed spotlight?

You didn’t speak. The silence said enough.

Frank stepped back, rubbing his jaw like he was trying to stop himself from saying something he couldn’t take back. You’d seen him do it once. When you said you didn't need to talk about what was happening at the hospital. That same helpless burn behind his eyes. “You don’t have to protect me.”

But you did. Because he couldn’t protect you. Not from this. Not from the things you didn’t fully understand yourself.

You both stood there, the gift box between you, as if waiting for it to explode.

You looked away. “It's not a big deal."

But that wasn’t true. You knew it. He knew it.

You were scared. Both for him, for yourself, for what silence might cost.

"Not a big deal? Christ’s sake!" Frank snapped, voice sharper now, cracking with frustration and fear. Louder than you’d heard him in months. "Look at yourself. You're keeping secrets, skipping out on your job for some gig? And you won't even tell me where it is! What am I supposed to do with that?"

Your shoulders hunched under the weight of it. You just got smaller. This-this was why you’d kept Frank out of it. Because you knew he’d see the things you were trying so hard not to admit. That this was wrong. That you were tangled in something you barely understood. That it wasn’t safe.

"Singing can't be that-"

"Don't tell me what's important, Frank!" You snapped, voice shaking with something sharp and brittle. You couldn’t bear one more person trying to decide your limits for you. "Everyone else is already telling me what to do, what to feel-I’m not going to let you do it too. You might not like what's going on. I don't always like what's going on. But don't tell me singing’s not important. Don’t tell me that the one damn thing that makes me feel like myself doesn’t matter."

There was a pause. Just a breath where it seemed like he might soften, step back, say something kind. You waited for it, almost begged for it with your silence.

He didn’t.

“Fine!” Frank’s mouth flattened. He grabbed his coat and keys off the counter with a sharp movement. “You want to keep your head in the sand, go right ahead.”

He stormed toward the door, yanking it open like it had offended him personally.

“See you at school,” he said, and then he was gone.

You stood frozen in the quiet he left behind, heart pounding. The front door clicked shut with finality, and all the little sounds of your apartment rushed back in like floodwater. The hum of the fridge. The wind at the window. The low static of guilt humming in your chest.

You stared at the unopened box on the counter, a silence growing heavy around it, and felt like the walls were getting smaller. Like they were folding in closer, pressing against your ribs.

TAG: @mrsnikstan @sassybearfire @calwitch @ruexj283 @yesiamthatwierd @trojanaurora @hextech-bros

[orbitondgtl]

not anymore - y.jh

pairing: jeonghan x reader includes: break up, ex-lovers, moving on wordcount: 0.8k summary: you retrieve your stuff from jeonghan's place, your ex-boyfriend. this time, it's definitely over.

─ ᵎᵎ ✦

When Jeonghan texted that your stuff was ready to be picked up, you hesitated to go at all. His presence was enough to send you into a spiral of shame and regret, but after much consideration you decided to get it over with.

With determined steps, you slipped into the elevator to Jeonghan’s floor. The closer it came, the more you regained confidence in your decision. You had to fight against your tears three weeks ago and it took all of your energy to resist his pleas. Sobbing and shaking, you had told him the inevitable and all that was left now was the shell of that person. A hard rock shell. 

Once, you loved Jeonghan so much that you were willing to put yourself through the cycle over and over. It was worth destroying yourself for. 

As you stepped out of the elevator, his apartment door was already open. The place that felt like home three weeks ago tried to squirm its way into your heart again, but you left your hurt and sorrow at the door. It couldn’t reach you when you stood in his living room. Not anymore.

It was for your own good, you reminded yourself. No matter how bright his presence in your life had been, how you felt on top of the world being with him, it was never worth the betrayal towards yourself, the person that really mattered now. Over the couple of weeks after the breakup, you were learning to forgive yourself for your blindness. 

The ruffling of a bag and a thud against a hard surface shook you out of your peptalk. Instead of a warm blanket wrapping around you, being near Jeonghan felt like the freezing winter breezes followed you inside. Turning your head to the side, your gaze fell on him.

“I hope this is everything,” He spoke tautly. His eyes wandered from you to the stuff in front of him.

Your blood started to boil at his behaviour, but you pushed that away as well. “I hope so, too,” You replied in the same manner, leaving it up to him whether you mocked him for being an asshole or you really felt that way. You snatched the stuff from the table and turned on your heel. 

“So this is it, then?”

The words made you freeze. Previous fights were predictable; you knew that would end with you two back together like you hadn’t given each other hell. The end had never been the end, until now. 

You weren’t sure how the actual end was going to go and the uncertainty embraced you so tightly, you couldn’t breathe anymore. But you prepared yourself for this. 

Jeonghan didn’t need to know that.

You turned around, as if the past few seconds weren’t riddled with doubt. You flared your nose as you clutched both bags into your fist. “Yes, Jeonghan,” You replied monotonously. “This is it.”

He nodded slowly and leaned back against the counter. As the light hit his face, you realised that his eyes were sunken back into his head. Dark bags hung underneath them and they looked almost black on his much paler skin.

Even the sight of him couldn’t break you. Not anymore. 

“Are you really sure?” He asked again. 

“Yeah, why?” 

Jeonghan took a deep breath as he crossed his arms. “We’ve had this before, you know? We fight, we make up, we move on. It’s nothing–”

“–we can’t do together.” You chuckled bitterly. “You say that every time, you know? What’s your plea this time, Jeonghan? Did I misjudge the situation? Don’t I have enough faith in our relationship? What have I done wrong this time?”

He cocked an eyebrow at you. “I never implied that you did something wrong.”

“It’s what it always boils down to.”

“Then I apologise for that, because that was never my intention.” He pushed himself away from the counter and walked over to you. He stopped right in front of you so you had no choice but to look at him.

Even if he looked like he hadn’t slept since you broke up, you didn’t stop seeing what you’ve seen throughout two years of being together. He was still kind and patient, like he had all the time in the world for you. You couldn’t bring yourself to care about more than that. 

Not anymore. 

“You can’t change my mind this time,” You said as a matter-of-fact. “I won’t allow myself to sit through another round. I deserve better than that.”

Jeonghan flinched at your words. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He clenched his jaws together again and for the first time, he accepted defeat. 

You swung your bag over your shoulder and bowed your head. “Good luck with Seventeen. You guys deserve the best.” 

All he did was smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

You never stuck around to find out if it ever would again. Not anymore. 

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Oaths & Exclamations

lo (Old English) ⚜ spi (c.1225) ⚜ how mischance (c.1330)

by my hood (c.1374) ⚜ by my sheath (1532)

by the mouse-foot (1550) ⚜ what a/the goodyear (c.1555)

bread and salt; by Jove (1575) ⚜ by my truly (1580)

by these hilts; by yea and nay/no (1598)

by the Lord Harry; by the pody cody (1693) ⚜ by jingo (1694)

splutterdenails (1707) ⚜ I snore (1790) ⚜ by hokey (1825)

shiver my timbers (1834) ⚜ by the (great) horn spoon (1842)

upon my Sam (1879) ⚜ for goodness’ sake (1885) ⚜ yerra (1892)

for the love of Mike (1901) ⚜ knickers (1971)

Honour-Related Oaths & Exclamations

aplight (1297) ⚜ by my troth (c.1374) ⚜ on one’s honour (c.1460)

upon my word (1591) ⚜ honour bright (1819)

With Reference to Life or Body Parts

by my life (c.1225) ⚜ by these ten bones (c.1485) ⚜ lifelikins (c.1644)

Imprecations

woe (971) ⚜ woe worth (c.1275) ⚜ dahet (c.1290)

confound; sorrow on (c.1330) ⚜ in the waniand (c.1352)

woe betide you (1362) ⚜ wild-fire (c.1375) ⚜ evil theedom (c.1386)

a pestilence (up)on (c.1390) ⚜ hang; murrain (c.1400)

vengeance (c.1500) ⚜ plague (c.1566) ⚜ maugre (1590)

pox (c.1592) ⚜ rot (1594) ⚜ cancro (1597) ⚜ perdition; death (c.1603)

pize; vild (1605) ⚜ peasecod (1606) ⚜ cargo (1607)

confusion (1608) ⚜ pest (1632) ⚜ light upon (1642) ⚜ deuce (1651)

rat (1691) ⚜ stap my vitals; strike me blind (1697)

split my windpipe (1700) ⚜ rabbit (1701) ⚜ consume (1756)

capot me (1760) ⚜ foul fall (c.1775) ⚜ weary (1788) ⚜ drat (1815)

rats (1816) ⚜ bad cess to (1859) ⚜ curse (1885)

Damn

damn (1589) ⚜ damnation (c.1603) ⚜ damme (1645) ⚜ darn (1781)

dash (1800) ⚜ hot damn (1929) ⚜ dammit (1956)

Mild Oaths

before George (c.1592) ⚜ Gemini (1664) ⚜ dash my wig (1797)

Jiminy (1803) ⚜ Christmas (1897)

Implying Rejection

farewell fieldfare (c.1413) ⚜ twenty-three skidoo (1926)

Foreign Words

parbleu (1696) ⚜ sapperment (1815) ⚜ caramba (1835)

merde (1920) ⚜ sapristi (1932)

The recorded examples above start relatively late, in the 13th century.

People must have sworn as much in the first millennium as they do today (Beowulf would surely have let out something rather more Anglo-Saxon in his various fights than the expressively elegant locutions we know from the poem) but the words would never have been written down.

The lists show an increasingly colloquial character as time goes by, and writers more accurately incorporate the language of everyday into their work.

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Historical Thesaurus Writing Resources PDFs

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Idol Worship.

Pairing: Yandere!Devil x Reader (Christianity).

Word Count: 1.0k.

TW: Consensual Sex, Size Difference, Implied (Past) Injury To Reader, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Scarring, and Themes of Religious Trauma.

The path to His throne was paved with salt and brimstone.

Smoldering rock burnt into the soles of your feet like ember, taken fresh from the heart of the fire. Living corpses, their rotting flesh deteriorating further with ever fraught breath, laid motionless on either side of the crumbling archway, their milky eyes watching your every stumbling movement. The air was heavy with smoke and sulfur, but the buzzling of unseen insects, the stench of the decay – that was all kept in your peripheral. It was meant for someone else, someone whose crimes were far more violent and far more damning than your own. Your fate was elsewhere.

The ascent was made no easier by your anticipation, the steps carved from black onyx and made steep enough to warrant your immediate and self-inflicted dehumanization, to force you to your hands and knees in your effort to scramble upward – ever upward, as if you hadn’t yet had enough of the blinding sky. Rough granite tore into the skin of your palms, but the agony was minimal, a shadow something greater that would not numb you to more intentional agony. The heat, too, was distant, rolling over you in tender waves and seeping under your skin to coil around your ribs, to weave in and out of ragged tears in your mutilated veins. Something snapped inside your chest as you finished your climb, fresh blood washing over your aching throat, but any pain you might’ve felt faded away as a great hand descended from the clouds of smog and ash, His calloused fingertips digging into your waist, your stomach as He took you up and placed you, gingerly, on His silk-clad thigh. His touch lingered, a thumb running over your scalp as He spoke. “Oh, my glorious one,” His voice was deep and flat and beautiful. “What have they done to you?”

Anything they could. Everything they could. Your body was still plagued with the phantoms of it, the frigid cold of steel and iron against flesh and bone. You tried to speak, but your voice was gone, muted by means beyond your own. You frowned, more frustrated than you were surprised, but He did not share in your disappointment. “They are sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.” After a beat, He added, “I will not be so forgiving.”

His hand began to pull away, but you scrambled after of it, latching onto His wrist in a futile effort to hold Him that much closer. An airy chuckle fell from Him unmoving muzzle – His golden, slit-pupiled eyes remaining focused on some distant point as He took you into His hold once again, lifting you first to His own height. For the first time, he moved in earnest – tilting his head forward and resting his forehead against yours. “The reason the Son appeared was to destroy the Devil’s work, for the thief comes only to steal and destroy.” His breath was cool against your skin, even as anger seeped into His tone. “And now, instead, you are asked to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.”

It was more of a croak than a proper plea, hoarse and fractured at all the wrong angles. Still, you managed it, your own small hands pressed into the swell of His palm. “Please, my lamb.”

He seemed to catch himself, inhaling sharply as He shook His head. “My apologies, I forget my audience. You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.” You nuzzled closer to Him, and He allowed you a moment of solace before pulling away, straightening Himself to His most dignified stature. “We have been separated for no short time. Tell me, will you not gratify the desires of the flesh?” A note of humor, a forked tongue allowed to skirt gingerly over your neck. “Will you not allow me to show the length of my devotion?”

You didn’t need to answer, it was a given that you would. His delicate tongue ran over the lacerations on your calves, your thighs - smearing dried blood and soothing open wounds. It flicked upward, lapping at the twin scars on either side of your chest, then the bruises painted across your collarbones, around the base of your throat. His hand shifted, wrapping around your waist, His hold firm and steady as He lowered you onto his length. There were other options – as many shapes and variations as a lustful heart could dream of – but His cock was among His most impressive features. The shaft alone matched your arm in length and your midriff in girth, and yet, it pierced you without resistance, filling you to the brim before He was so much as half-sheathed inside of you. Your knees pressed into his lap, your hand grasping for purchase against his broad chest, but you felt no fear, nor was your exertion necessary in the face of His willingness to serve. He let out a raspy breath, allowing His head to lull back as He thrust gently into you from below. “Earthly one, glorious one,” The pet name fell from His lips like milk and butter and honey. “We will lead each other astray. We will be the force by which the greatest love is defined.”

A growl of a moan as your walls clenched around Him, a sharp snap of His hips. “We will be bound together in perfect harmony,” His hand found the underside of your chin, tilting your head back with only the upmost delicacy. “And those who try to separate us will face only the most just of retribution.”

Your eyes met His, that wonderous gold melting into softened mortality. Where there should have been revulsion, there was only warmth, only light. Foolishly, for a moment, you allowed yourself to scorn the shine of the heavens, to loathe all things that were not Him.

You allowed yourself to believe that you would need nothing else, not so long as His gaze fell upon you.

[moonlaceletters]

hii, i would love to see your take of a fem aroace!reader with the allies 🙏🙏

yandere! allies x aro/ace! reader - england & america

─── notes ➤ reader is implied to have disability for realism purposes, being late teenager / young adult + for ease of enjoyment -- ‘luna’ is placeholder for the reader’s name ;w; thank you so much for such lovely request! remaining allies are coming in the following days! long post ahead! ─── warnings ➤ abuse of political power / manipulation / questionable power dynamics / darker sensuality / controlling behaviour / isolation amongst others.

arthur o'neil kirkland / england

Arthur deemed himself as someone proud – man of the culture, wisdom and fixed values. As a reverent kingdom and empire of the past – certain notions never left his heart. Oh, you were his favourite, apple of the eye – even if did not dare to admit such reverence out loud. If circumstances should be different – of course, without hesitation, he would find himself steering away from any closer, more intimate relationships with mortals. Their lifetime was bound by fixed laws and mechanics, while land transcended centuries to behold. It was simply easier to avoid entertaining the heart-ache; sorrow – by circumventing such situations at all. But… how could he resist?

ᯓ★

Porcelain tea-cup clicked smoothly against the table, adorned with intricate, vintage floral patterns – from much older, chaotic times. By kindness of his truly. Faded, green eyes fixated for a brief on thoughtful expression etched into her gentle features. Something was going on – unspoken tension lingering for weeks now. Irony laid open – hoping that maybe, in a way – his sweetheart could trust him enough to reveal… specifics. ‘Arthur, darling… it is just I’ve been terribly unlucky with people around me… well…’ – oh, how her heart yearned to find enough bravery to gather thoughts fully into something comprehensible, but, alas. Her friend was much better at such a state of affairs than she could ever be. ‘Luna, what is going on? I am worried for you, and it deeply saddens me’ ‘It is just… people around me find themselves very happy in romantics, so easily. As if it was somehow universally understood, I don’t know…’ – dainty fingers trembled under the weight of never-ending accusations of mind; steady hands wrapping around shakiness as if to provide the slightest bit of comfort. ‘I really tried my best! I did! – and he seemed really kind, or I thought so… how could I have been so blind? Arthur, he merely entertained his own needs, physical ones–’ ‘Y-you warned me… I should’ve listened, I-I–’ – thought wavered over silence; tiny hiccups filling up the space with peculiar sorrow. Pure, unbridled vermillion blossomed in sight, reality spinning. Good heavens, help his soul. He was too old for this. Knuckles tightened until whites over the poor edge of the table, almost tipping it over – the girl ushered into a hug immediately. There were traditional, fixed ideals of what constituted a good and proper image of human interaction – especially, between opposite genders. Femininity consisted of warmth, grace – and fragility, intertwined with the need of masculine notions to protect, cherish, love its' existence. Such values, deeply ingrained in margins of consciousness, never wavered – and this went against everything Arthur could hold dear. That is, his darling. And if others would not conform to this – he would. However, this little… the issue would have to be solved quietly. No inference was necessary. Few days passed – the soul disappearing into silence; under charges of treason and conspiracy against the United kingdom and surrounding territories. He was ended switfly after. ᯓ★ headcanons! Darling, sweetheart, apple of his eye – you were absolutely his favourite – through and through. outside, arthur would be an ideal image of gentleman – from tactful behaviour to the very last word – all orchestrated, calculated, measured. Millenia of existence gave enough tools and time to perfect the art. That is not to misunderstand, he loved her – truly. Maybe in a more sentimental way – finding comfort in the very traditional dynamic of being the provider, the pillar of the home. Any attempt to carry more weight than the subtle role provided would be met with sweet-honey words of manipulation – immediately stopping any possibility of rebellion. Physical manifestation of darling’s disability would become the greatest tool of social isolation – were people not staring enough, talking behind your back in the study halls, speaking rumoured whispers – so… why should Luna entertain such ruckus, if she could be perfectly content with being his sweetheart? The queerplatonic relationship concept in itself – was not something old, reverent ways ought to be understood, but as long this dynamic remained – he would be more than happy to entertain such an idea. You had no idea what sort of sweet-honey trap you have gotten yourself into.

alfred franklin jones / america Soft, hazy lights filled up cozy space – Alfred shifting to be slightly closer, ghosting hand above small of the waist, not daring… to hold on, yet. Just yet. Every single conversation like this grated at the very last remnants of already frayed nerves. ‘Pfft, again? People have nothing better to do nowadays, really’ – he merely snickered, pinching the edge of his nose out of new-found frustration. These stories were starting to get hold of his psyche. ‘So, wait, what happened between Gabriel and Samantha?’ ‘As I was saying, Alfie – it was very sudden! One second they were in love in our class, another – screaming at once, another as the switch flipped over. As I was a friend of his – just a good acquaintance, you know – he asked for a favour, obviously’ – soft laugh filled the room, girl swatting imaginary nargles; expression full of sincerity. Way-too-happy girl was picked up with such ease, him merely nuzzling close, getting a few more giggles out. As affection could infer into deeper sources of the mind; dragging hidden, secluded parts into light. ‘Oh, you’re too sweet, ahahah!’ ‘It is the least I can do, darlin’, go on, I'm listening! You gotta tell me! Your little legs, careful!’ What favour? Nothing about this entirety of story played to be good-willing act of service. Pathetic, to say the least – eye twitching, jaw tensing up until teeth grated against each other in disastrous symphony; slender fingers digging just a little too much into the softness of her hip. Smiling until cheeks bled dry with falsified semblance. ‘Oh, yeah, thaaat! So, there was this kind of silly party last weekend, which we went together because he asked to get this revenge thingy going on, you see?’ ‘That’s great! How did it go? Must’ve been a blast!’ – plentitude of soft kisses peppered across rosy cheeks, as the girl swaddled him away in the most tender fashion; feeling… how pliant form became under hold, finding himself… just a bit closer. ‘Totally! Yeah, we might have gotten a bit… drunk, but it was all in good fun!’ ‘Yeah, sweets, in good fun’ – all it took – a few moments – Luna toppled over with such ease; his wrists holding his sunshine down – even if ache gnawed between arches of ribs through guilt. ‘What’s that? Huh? I thought I meant something for you?’ – with calculated, gentle touch fingertip ghosted above the collarbone, over faint marks. This entire situation blossomed into full circus with additional flair to follow… and it shall not be entertained any longer. ‘Do you even remember anything, mm?’ – little prefix as if flaunting clear mockery. ‘We just crashed at his place, nothing happened, Al! You know how clumsy I can be with my cane, you’re being ridiculous!’ “I dunno, angel, bruises on neck don’t kinda magically happen overnight… and we’re very sure you don’t recall shit. So… this leaves only one conclusion’ – starry, ocean blue eyes. These eyes, impossibly livid, entrancing with hypnotic dance of reverent hues. Glittering, sparkling, floating. ‘I-I- I’ve been–’ – Luna choked, world dizzyingly nauseous too suddenly, tears simmering in waterfalls over honest accusation of truth, entire frame wracked by sobs – enveloped in dizzyingly addicting warmth. Unconsciously, instinctively the entire form arched for him, for him only so prettily – as always meant to be – mere intention making his head spin with desire, want, need – to end this theatrics there and now – to claim, to devour, to make his sunshine happy. ‘Shh, I’ve got you…’

ᯓ★ headcanons!

Brighter than the sun – burning brighter than stars above heavens – america himself, independent and fierce– this is who alfred represented – force, larger than life itself; reflected from golden strands shimmering in the light until boundless positivity, seeping from every hug – every little affection he was entitled, privileged to give. You were his sunshine, his beloved! With beautiful energy and softness, meant only for him to indulge in – it was a life worth living! His beloved was a blessing from the gods, even if her love expression, or affection ways were different – yet, unspoken naivety, trust – it was a steep price to pay. It was impossible to understand – where friendship bounds ended or dark, obsessive devotion began. Of course, humans needed one another – it was an essential part of our being, ingrained into very core, into bones and narrows of the flesh – isolating fragility beyond promises could not be optional, but it could be beautifully contained. Nothing… nothing few nights of forgetful sleep, with skillful essence blossoming under hazy, sweet tea – and pliant, gentle form could not fix. There was no need to poison essences of mind with CIA agents, reverberating screams across walls or legal procedures, after all. Everything was provided, handed on the golden platter – most gorgeous of dresses, art supplies, position in the best of the universities – best healthcare – all hidden between gentlest hugs, softest cuddles and lingering kisses on the forehead. His sunshine looked incredibly beautiful as a little bird in a golden cage.

[amica-aenigmata-naboo]

Savior

Mizu x Y/N - drabble - 1.1K WC

Masterlist

Warnings: prostitution, attempted SA (not too detailed just implied), Mizu being sexy, he/him pronouns for Mizu

-----------------------------------

You had never met someone with eyes like yours. You wore glasses every day, the world appearing dark and dim because of them. You worked for Madame Kaji; being left on a brothel's doorstep as an infant. She saved you from the cold and raised you. She couldn’t stand to watch you be a prostitute, you were practically her own. So she made you useful in other ways. Fetching things for her, cooking, cleaning, always making sure the girls had whatever they needed. You also managed to learn quite a bit of judo. A necessity as you got older, mens wandering eyes and rough hands attempting to take you more often than you would like to admit. Today was no different, you had gathered all the groceries you had been sent to get. You prepared soup for you and Madame Kaji before she had to go and tend to the clients. You only really got to see her in brief moments like these. 

“Good evening mama.” you smiled sweetly at her as you set her bowl in front of her before giving her cheek a delicate kiss. 

She smiled at you before she started eating, “I want you to be careful today.” she said.

“I’m always careful.” you shrugged.

“No, I mean it.” she said as she forcefully set her spoon down. “We have dangerous company.”

You nodded, not wanting to further vex her. You both ate in silence, content with the atmosphere. You both stood, you going to clean.  Madame Kaji’s hand grabbed your wrist before you could make your swift exit. She pulled you back to her before she tucked your hair behind your ears. She slipped your glasses off, you squinted as you adjusted to the light. 

“Rain child,” she said as she kissed your cheek, “how beautiful you are.” 

You smiled and leaned into her touch. Nobody but her and the other prostitutes knew of your eyes. Everyone in the village assumed you were blind, not caring much in general about some whore mongers bastard child. Even Boss Hamata didn’t want you. You preferred it that way; better to be simple and plain than to attract every twisted glance that held nothing but malcontent. She left the small room. As you cleaned you couldn’t help but wonder what company she spoke of. To be fair, most of the usuals were harmless. But there will always be those who enjoy the pain of others. 

You made your way down the hall; watching Ise shrug her Kimono back on as she walked out of one of the many rooms. She gave you a small smile before walking into the parlor to fetch her next client. You shuffled into the room, starting to clean it before one of the girls needed it. Straightening the table, refilling the sake, wiping the sweat and regret off the floor mats. You knew none of the girls liked this work. But you looked at all of them like sisters, you felt their pain and sorrow. You often snuck them sweets Madame Kaji bought for you two to share. Life could always be a little sweeter, even in a small regard. You were almost finished cleaning when you heard what sounded like someone stumbling into the room. You turned and saw a man. Not a regular, tall and stocky. He swayed slightly, alcohol reeking from him. You bowed as you stepped back, putting space between you.

“You’re a… pretty one.” he hiccuped out as he shut the door behind him.

Your heart started racing, nothing good happens behind closed doors here. He stomped over to you harshly dragging you to the ground. He tried to pin you but you kicked him in the shoulder, sending him back. You scrambled up, almost reaching the door when he pulled you by the edge of your kimono. You fell to the ground, stomach against the floor. He held you down with one hand while the other pulled up your skirts. You sobbed and let out one shriek before he shoved your face into the floor, breaking your glasses in half. Your muffled sobs were all that remained. You heard the door fly open and saw a flash of red splatter the walls, a few drops dotting your face. You froze, shock finally settling in as you realize what almost happened to you. Foreign hands rolled you over deftly, you heard their distant voice and saw them through your tunnel vision. 

“Are you ok?” he asked, blue eyes meeting yours. 

He leaned over top of you, arms on either side of your head. You both gawked at each other until you heard running down the hallway. Madame Kaji and a few other prostitutes rushed in. The scowl on your mothers face horrified you. She shoved the blue eyed stranger off you before raising her hand to strike him.

“How dare you touch them!” she shouted. 

You caught her wrist right before she could make impact, “No mama! It wasn’t him.” you rushed out. 

You looked towards the corpse in the opposite corner which was cut in half. You felt the mystery man's hands gently close your kimono which you hadn’t realized fell open. You blushed at his kindness, his respect. Madame Kaji helped you up, a slight shake in your legs from the fear of it all. She walked you to your room but not before you saw which room the blue eyed man entered. As you waited you couldn’t help but think of his eyes, his gentle yet rough hands. Your mind wandered, wanting to know how his lips felt. You shook your head as you made your way to his room, slipping inside silently. 

The samurai’s eyes immediately found yours, yet he remained silent.

“May I sit?” you asked softly.

He nodded. 

“I wanted to thank you…” you said, “I also wanted… to see…” your thoughts tapered out, embarrassed of what you truly wanted to ask. “Your eyes.”

He held a look you couldn’t place an emotion to, “Sit.” is all he said.

You sat closer than he expected, faces inches apart. You knew this position was unbecoming but you didn’t seem to care. You had only ever seen one other person with different eyes, Yuko the prostitute with green eyes and golden hair. But these were blue, just like yours. You admired them looking at the beautiful samurai overall after a while and not just his eyes. 

Your hand came up to gently cradle his face. You moved on instinct, giving him a chaste kiss before leaning back, “Thank you…”

“Mizu.” he answered after a moment, lips buzzing from the brief yet sweet kiss. 

“Thank you Mizu.” you said before bowing and swiftly exiting the room. 

Your heart raced, and little did you know, so did Mizu’s.

-----------------------

Naboo's Note:

Hello! My first Blue Eyed Samurai post! YAYYYYYY! It's been a long time coming given my obsession with the show but better late than never! Thank you for all the likes and comments, super motivating! XOXOXOXOXOXOX

[sunsetlobster]

To Satiate a Hunger part 4

Authors: Myself and @sovietstrange45

Summary: Finding an appropriate stop on the brink of starvation, A Night lord War band ransacks Ghilana for every morsel of food and fuel they have. In the process, Ladomir an ex-terror squad member stumbles upon one thing they've been sorely needing.

Warnings: Self harm, horror themes, blood, implied violence, forced proximity, Ladomir has a blood kink, the writing structure is a raw cut from what was originally written so apologies for any weirdness there ><

Word Count: 8.4k

← Previous chapter | Next Chapter →

It'd been hours, hours upon hours. More then she'd slept last and near enough to begin to be concerning. Then those dark eyes battered awake, and she was staring up into the darkness, the plush of a cot under her body and an odd shift of fabric over herself. She was still here in hell, but her blanket wasn't over herself, turning the soft sting of her neck welcomed her back to reality. A sorrow in her confused brow.

Just like the first time, the timing was upon their side. As the door slid open to Harold Ladomir's return. His ruby eye lenses burning through the open, black corridor. Though he hardly seemed to wait before stepping in on the thudding growl of his midnight armour, unseen hands raising to his helmet. The decompressing hiss of air seeped from his neck seal, freeing his gnarled visage to the void once again. "I am... pleased, that you are awake."

She looked at him confused. "You're going to talk to me now?" Sneh asked finding the sudden shift from a cold shoulder to relaxed calm odd. However, she once more dared not move, not when she knew what he could do.

Ladomir scoffed, the metal thud of his boots carrying him to him to sit across from her. Oddly, he didn't have the normal... scent, to put it kindly, of the blood spattered Astartes she had initially met. Of course, his armour still looked unwashed and unpolished from years of use, but he himself was, clear. Not clean, but clear. "I was talking yesterday."

"Not after that!" She piped up looking over at him, a newfound furry in her eyes as he sat so casually without a care as though he hadn't lapped at her neck with the hungry caress of a lover.

Raising a brow, Ladomir gestured to nothing in particular. "I told you to get up and accompany me to the deck. Then after you returned with Sar'val, I tried getting you to talk on multiple occasions, and you looked at me like an animal blinded by lights."

"What?" She asked finally sitting up realising her clothes were certainly different. "I haven't been anywhere; I only just woke up."

Ladomir, pinched his brow between a cold, night blue gauntlet. Even when he was trying to be helpful, his little bird was a headache. "You certainly were, and you came back to me covered in viscera."

"I don't remember such things. Don't lie like that." She quipped back trying to find a reason for why she had her clothes changed that wasn't.... But her hips didn't hurt, and her body didn't ache outside of her neck but, he stopped the night before. He did, she knew he did. So, crawling back into bed so her back hit the wall, Sneh gave him an uncomfortable look.

"And why would I lie about that?" The Night Lord returned, watching as the baker scuttled away from him, who by contrast was practically a living statue. "You must not have witness Ghilana in enough detail, for a bolter shell ripping a man in two to leave you as catatonic as you were. Now, you mean to tell me, that you've lost the memory completely?"

"Because you leave me in these after I'd fallen asleep" She uttered with her knife tongue like a scared animal as she clung to herself.

"Apologies, that there was no washing system, to get intestinal matter out of your clothing." The pale creature scoffed, finding himself regretting giving Sneh all the aid he had. After he went through all the effort to help her be unsullied by such distasteful blood. "I had to bathe you, so that you would not having rotting meat stuck on your face, or infecting your wound. You're welcome."

The mere thought sent a shiver down her spine even if she still believed it was but a lie. Being laid bare and touched by a creature made her heart rise to her throat and tears prick at the corners of her eyes. He truly was a deplorable creature, wasn't he? A monster who only took what he wanted when he wanted.

And he could tell, he could smell the fear within her, bubbling to the surface and tugging at her soul. Yet, this was the one time he was trying not to illicit such a visceral sensation through someone. The notion alone that he felt it worthwhile enough to attempt such, and that it was not doing a thing, was enough to ruffle Ladomir. "I woke you up, we went to the command deck, and Captain Kolvare ordered you and Sar'val to hand out the rations to the slave holds. He returned you to the deck wide eyed and covered in blood, and I could barely get you to let go of his belt. I thought the courtesy of cleansing you of human matter would be appreciated. Apparently, my kindness was misplaced. And just so you are aware, you were awake when I did such."

She couldn't help but shake her head, it couldn't be true, she didn't remember a damn thing and the mere idea of everything was utterly mortifying. Besides she couldn't trust him, he was the enemy. A cold fiend that lapped her blood like a delicacy freely and at the very least took the liberty of laying his hands on her to change her clothes. Ladomir couldn't be trusted, he never could why did she think for a moment that she could ever? He was a monster, a fiend.

"Mother, I am tired, Can I sleep in your house tonight?" He uttered, not necessarily trying to imitate the way in which she had softly sung the words in the bath. Nor the humming that was ever present around it, until she had drifted off into a peaceful slumber. Much more peaceful than how she was acting now. Damn humans. "You sang something like that, while you bathed."

Her eyes seemed to shed any comfort she had in believing he was such a fiend and rather she now fixated on one small truth, he had bathed her. He had held her and she had been catatonic. And instead of words, she quivered in place and held herself, trying to hide herself from the beast that lurked in the dark.

Ladomir's lips pressed into a thin line, unsure of what he even wanted to achieve now. He could not leave Sneh here by herself, but she seemed to revile his very presence. Perhaps not too much surprise he supposed. Sure, as hell though, he would not trust her care in the clumsy hands of one of his brothers again. With a snarled huff, he rummaged for... something. Before tossing a white cloth to the mortal, rather than risk her terror at his physical approach. "That was the only thing that could be salvaged from the gore." Sneh's head cover, lay in front of her on her sheet.

She clambered for it and clutched it close to her heart curled over into a ball. Then a small, "thank you" whispered out from the unstable human mass he'd been saddled with.

Now that he had her thanks, Ladomir did not feel as if he ever wanted it in the first place, and that only upset him greater. Nostrils flared as he huffed, and brushed it aside, turning his gaze to the wall and trying to understand what unholy part of his soul decided to accommodate this mere human so, and why even in his annoyance with her and himself, did he continue to do so. With that, he let out a tired sigh and finally spoke of what Sneh had also feared so greatly. "And... I did not taste of your blood, neither."

The mass nodded softly but didn't move, it wasn't just the blood it was many things, so very many things. She wasn't built for this world. His world, a place of demon’s nightmares and patchy memories. But worse yet, Sneh knew all too well she had work to do lest she be condemned and used as food herself.

Rising to his feet once more, Ladomir tried to appear less threatening than he was. Though, for a beast such as him, and a Night Lord no less, that meant a painfully rigid posture. In opposition to the usual skulking stalk. "Are you hungry, little bird?"

She nodded and reluctantly sat up curled over tightly gripping her dark blue head cover. "Is the war band?" She whispered her brow furrowed and her mouth drawn into a thin line.

"The greedy ones, perhaps." Ladomir mused, shaking his head in turn, as he laid his helmet on a wall mount. Clear reluctance in his movements, but regardless the night borne monster of terror itself, ventured in offering her a hand. "But we can go longer than mortals without food."

She almost took his hand out of instinct, but quickly Sneh stopped herself it and crawled out of bed herself dusting herself off to get an idea of just what she was wearing. Her lashes looked low like how she had when she slept on his chest, a soft passive expression painted on her face. "What of the slaves in the holds?" She asked pulling her hat on her head, hiding her short raven hair.

With an unchanging neutrality on his face, his hand lowered to his side once more, black eyes gazing down at the slave. "Technically they can go a little longer now too." He remarked, the constant annoyance, stitched into his brow. "But it's true that we would like to keep those on the command deck fed and functioning."

"Then I suppose, we have work to do then, don't we?" She asked going to grab her lamp pack and turn it on.

He modded, that head of black and grey peppered hair, softly shining in the low light of her lamp pack from the fresh sheen of cleanliness. An odd look, considering how often they all spent looking ragged and blood splattered. "Yes, we do, little bird."

As they exited, she asked under her breath. "What is this nickname you have for me?"

Stomping down familiar halls, he glanced down at that head of midnight hair, brain annoyingly tugging forward the images of her peaceful face amidst the tub, his finger brushing hair from it. With a suppressed growl dying in his throat, he pulled back images from much older memories. Ones of a world, with a black sky. "I come from a planet called Nostramo. It has been scrubbed from most imperial records over the ten millennia. There were very few things born of that planet that I could consider, 'pleasant', in any way. Rapists, murderers, lowborn curs. The 'nobles' were just gangs with money and suits. These were meant to be my role models." The words fell from his lips in venomous tongues. The spiking sensation of his acidic spit clawing at the back of his tongue causing his face to twitch, before he swallowed it back with a low rumble.

"...And birds were one of these things?" She asked a similar fowl taste in her mouth at the thought of such people running rampant and free.

Ladomir laughed, but there wasn't any amusement within it. A dry, hollow thing. "I hated them, I hated them all. Many of them, are my brothers" He admitted, a cruel smirk etched into the corpse like marble features of his face. "When you here talk of wildlife, most will tell you of the great lion. Or an alley dog they either killed for sport or owned and found dead. I, one day, had a bird on my windowsill. It was a small, frizzled thing with thick eyebrows. It was loud when it chirped, it had no care for your personal space, and it seemed to enjoy annoying me. I found, peace in its presence."

Sneh looked to the floor; he didn't need to tell her such things to believe him. Not with the way some looked at her when she'd served them. Hungry stares, uncomfortable smiles, faint attempts at compliments and the soft chatter of how she'd taste. They were a pit of animals and yet she had no way to say if Ladomir was any better or worse after all he had a clear stated craving for her. And as he spoke the second time, she initially went to harp on how he too killed a creature who minded its own business but as he finished out, she bit her tongue and stayed herself for but a moment. "Am I your pet then? Like that bird?" She asked the tap of her shoe’s soles on the metal mincing with the bellows and low hum of the vessel.

"I don't take pets. That bird was no pet. I tried to stroke its black feathers and bit my finger. I nearly smacked it, but I couldn't muster the energy to do it." Ladomir continued, despite Sneh's spiteful remark. Traversing down hallways together, that were blissfully empty as he recounted such memories. Memories, he could not recall counting with any others. Memories, that he sometimes still dreamed of. "My father and my mother despised it's cry. They told me to kill it, the moment the opportunity presented itself. I promised I would, but instead I would throw crumbs on my windowsill. They never got over listening to it chirping over and over again. Then, one night, it came back with a little one. Another ball of black feathers and beady eyes that stared into my soul. It was silent that night. I never saw it again, and I was recruited not long after."

Sneh's head raised as he spoke, the soft possible lies filling her heart with a pinch of hope for at least one person even if he'd dreadfully overstepped still being someone, she might one day be able to depend upon in this hellscape. Not even beginning to mention how it truly did seem like an apt nickname for herself. A small bushy browed creature who cried and sat on his windowsill waiting to be killed.

"I used to miss that bird, quite often." Ladomir mused, almost absent mindedly, forgetting that he'd even spoken the old thought a loud. A gentle musing that seemed an odd home on his marbled corpse scowl of a face. An old warrior better fitted with a bolter in hand, than a pen. Even as they arrived at the mess.

Stepping in, Sneh knew she'd need to clean this place, multiple times probably knowing the grime and dust that'd no doubt accumulated. "...With the way you spoke before it almost sounded as though you wanted to try cooking." She said soft in the echoing metal of the mess hall.

Ladomir slowly nodded, gently stroking his chin between midnight blue gauntlet. "I have to admit, I enjoyed helping in the... prep. I suppose even beasts like me, may get bored over four millennia of existence."

Sneh couldn't help but smile and give a breath of a laugh as she came to stand beside him. Her small hand covering said smile as to not be rude. "Then, pray tell what you would wish to make, fiend?" Sneh asked looking to the soft light under the kitchen door.

The Lord of Night smiled in turn, a gnarly thing as always. An expression always coloured by a distrustful sneer, completely out of his control. Scars pulling and tugging at the corner of his mouth in every which way to expose more teeth than intended, shape his mouth to one side more so than necessary. Yes, these countless years of battle had even taken his ability to smile, in their long list of casualties. "Oh please, I am not the expert here, little bird. Enlighten me, as to what meal even a fiend could be trusted to make?"

The smile had her smile wavering behind her hand, the many scars indeed pulling his into a gnarled grin perfect for a creature of his tastes. "I think I know something you could put your skills to use on." She spoke. ~~~ Sneh'd grabbed out the sack of vegetables from the pantry, a bowl, eggs, salt and flour. "Here." She said handing him a grater and peeler. "While these mightn't scream, this should be familiar. I hope."

He took the items, holding them in his oversized hands, scanning what Sneh had laid out before him and herself after thorough rummaging. Holding the tools dumbly, he turned his deep black gaze to the woman, dead panned. "We did not have vegetables on Nostramo."

Sneh looked at him utterly bamboozled. "Um, well, we'll you'll just need to peel, skin? Some carrots and zucchini." She grabbed the orange and green long beasts and put some out. "A little goes a long, long way, so just do a few." She shined an awkward half smile under a brow that cringed at the notion of his home having no such things.

Ladomir's hearty laugh echoed off the ship's aching hull, the rattling ribcage of an old god. Grasping the vegetable within his ceramite clad grip, and laying the tool over it as he began, black eyes still more focused on the cook, her smile, returned by another amused smile of his own. "I am joking, little bird, but I appreciate the lesson nonetheless."

She wanted to punch him, but she damn well knew every bone in her hand would shatter without as much of a peep out of him. Not that pain was the issue which she wanted for him, no. So, grabbing an old decrepit saucepan, she hit his bicep with it in retaliation instead. A clear pang of metal on metal resounded and it left the already half dead pan worse for wear.

At most, it deviated the peeling and made what would be a perfect strip, quite askew. It certainly caught the Night Lord by surprise, an almost bewildered gaze in his black eyes as he stared down at the mortal in her valiant, saucepan fury. Then he let out another, smaller, laugh. "Better?"

"Only a little." She muttered putting it on the counter while she went and oiled the actual pan, swirling it around in a stubborn huff.

"You're going to need a new pan in any case." He joked in turn, going about his peeling and skinning now with the same efficiency he did on the much more... macabre subjects he was most familiar with. An almost comic delicacy with his massive, gauntlet clad hands careful and swift as they took care of the vegetables.

"I'm sure there'll be more." She swatted away heating the pan to get it warmed and ready for work after who knows how long. "I should've said it earlier but, make sure to grate them into the bowl after by the way."

"Oh, yes of course, my lady." That same sarcasm dripped from his lips just as the last time she had ordered him about to do something in the kitchen. Though much like the last time, Ladomir was still listening and doing it regardless. Unsightly for someone of his calibre and reputation perhaps, but boredom was one hell of a motivator.

The oil sizzled and popped over the heat of the old stove warming it, readying it and like that she then pulled it off, washed it in water let it cool and then came over to stand beside him, cracking an egg almost doing the second out of instinct before she handed it to him.

Ladomir took it, holding it just as softly as he had cradled her skull when imbibing on her blood. Just as delicately as he had held her in the bath, cradled and held her painfully human form, like she just might shatter if he wasn't careful. His brow furrowed as he stared at the delicate object in his grip. Sparing a glance now at Sneh, as if looking for confirmation in his confusion.

"Don't tell me they didn't have eggs on Nastromo either." She said looking back up at him holding the cracked eggshell of her own.

His lips parted, no doubt for some witty response. Some dry sarcastic remark at Sneh's expense, and for his own amusement. Once his black eyes fell upon her though, that painfully... simplistic sight, of his little bird. In her element, something as simplistic as a broken eggshell making her look all the more blissfully mundane. It was a similar kind of peace Ladomir found in image, as to her bliss sleeping against his chest. "No, we had those." He tapped the egg with a surprising softness against the counter edge and pouring it in alongside hers.

Extending her hand out for the shell, she smiled and pushed the flour and an odd little cup to him. "You'll need to add half a cup of flour and stir." She said honestly joyed to see such a beast to engage in an activity so unbefitting of him.

Perhaps the most amusing, and infuriating part of it all, was that he found he was decent at it. He was Astartes. Sure, unfamiliarity would breed inefficiency, but he was meant to learn and pick up on things quickly. He was following Sneh's orders, but he did not have the energy to become so uppity about it. Mostly because, against his better judgement, it was aiding the boredom, and he didn't care enough to pick and choose who he passed the time now. So, in an odd delicate nature for an armour-clad animal, he followed instructions once more. Carefully measuring, pouring, and stirring. "You're trying to make a line cook of me."

“Well having an extra pair of hands around to help serve an entire ship would be helpful.” She said putting them in the bin before coming back to watch closely and sprinkle in salt.

"Perhaps. Though I doubt my father imagined me cooking, when he envisioned my future in his legion." Ladomir remarked, in part a joke, in part a sarcastic observation. Stirring still as she sprinkled in her salt.

“Why care about anything he has to say? You’re a grown man, aren’t you?” Sneh laughed to herself and then her face dropped and looked at him with a cold deadpan. “Aren’t you?”

"I am over four hundred years old, little bird." Ladomir, had no other choice but to laugh. So much loaded history she was completely ignorant of in such simple sentences. Such sentiments, she might shudder to realize we're shared by so many of his brother's. "But I suppose I was eight when I was recruited by the legion."

Her eyes shot open wide at that admission. She knew Angels of death could live lifetimes on but heating such things firsthand still had her shocked regardless. “I’d certainly hope you’d be an adult by now then.” She said completely downplaying her shock as Sneh guided him over to the pan, bowl in hand.

Following her guidance, another odd, almost hilarious sight as the small woman guided and softly bossed around a beast so much taller and wider than she, another chuckle was on his lips. "You would hope. Many of us, might not quite fit that description however."

“I believe you.” She said taking the bowl and giving him the bottle of oil. “Now swirl it in the pan to grease it up and then we can place the fritters in, and they won’t get stuck.”

"Yes, yes, my lady." The roll of his eyes was hardly visible, given their nature. Not as such, was the slow affection creeping into his tone with each remark. Not that he was acutely aware of it, nor how it laced the way he called her his little bird.

Surprisingly he didn’t rip the handle off the pan immediately and that had her gently impressed. So, putting globs in the pan for him to cook, she gave him a spatula and the directions to turn them when they were ready to be turned and watched. It was an odd thing but an interesting one, a worthy way to get her mind off things after such awful, supposed events.

Of all things, this was where Ladomir's focus seemed the most focused. A dedicated focus to ensure that he did not accidently burn them horribly. Perhaps it seemed silly but given their food situation changing only just days ago, it seemed appropriate. Unaware of how Sneh seemed to enjoy the sight, watching as he... well, cooked like a man.

“Why do you like blood so much?” She asked perhaps a dangerous question and yet one she couldn’t help but ask.

At that, the great beast could not help but still, a grand statue of the macabre within the kitchen. "I do not know why, the thirst began." He admitted recalling the first time sanguine had touched his lips. "The first time I drank it, was not even pleasant. Ever since I joined the legion, I have yearned for it, however. It is like wine, if I had to describe it in simple terms. There is a... sophistication, if you will. The aroma, the taste, the way it feels against my lips, sliding over my tongue. Even passing down my throat. Each part is important, and the best, have unique qualities that enhance each step of the process."

“And you lose yourself?” She asked remembering clear as day how readily he slipped into lapping at her wound ready to nurse on it, the soft rumble of his mouth against her flesh making her cry out his name as he cradled her skull.

"If the sheer quality of the blood is so great, then yes. I can lose myself sometimes." Ladomir admitted, eyes shutting she recalled the night. Recalled her blood, how it delighted his every sense. To the point he had overstepped so greatly. Such a thing to worry about was beneath his station, or even demi-being status, of course. But when it came to the chef, he wanted to ensure would actually want to cook for them, and not have a breakdown stuck with him, it felt appropriate to measure himself and feel that worry. "Usually, I am much better about not doing so, when I am trying to ignore the thirst."

“I see.” She uttered rubbing her cut almost as if to hide it as he cooked.

Distracting himself once more with the cooking, a grumble rushed through his broad chest. Knowing that despite his words he made himself turn his gaze away, whenever he saw the bare wound. Unsure if he properly could, or even should, express to Sneh, just how great her blood was. Not as a meal to be devoured by some creature. Rather as an exquisite wine, that deserved nothing less than to be enjoyed, raised upon a pedestal and drink from with deep reverence. To be handled with care and grace, near worshipped, perhaps. "You may change your bandages yourself, from now on, if you would prefer."

“I think I’d like that.” She said getting him a plate to put the cooked ones on.

A hum passed through his being, gentle picking up those that were ready, and setting it on the plate for her. Having forgotten in part that he was supposed to feel perhaps a sense of embarrassment, or something similar, in doing all this.

She smelt them and smiled, her mouth watering at finally getting to have something in her belly but not yet, it was still steaming hot. “You’d make a good line cook.”

The pale demi-human couldn't help the dry laugh that rasped from his throat. Black eyes peering into the dish he'd helped cook, and the one who had taught him. "Maybe, in a different life."

"I don't see why you can't in this one," She uttered, "At least in secret if that’s your worry." Sneh placed it down onto the table and staved herself from grasping a fritter for her growling belly lest she burn her fingers.

"Perhaps." He mused, almost laughing at the idea of him stuck in this kitchen, furiously making all the food alongside Sneh. Perhaps with the banter, it wouldn't be the worst thing. Even if horribly ill fitting. "As I said, it wasn't quite in our father's vision for us, when he elevated us to the legion."

"I also don't believe your father would've wanted you and your 'legion' to starve like dogs." She countered as the batter shrank and shrank with each fritter cast in and out onto the plate.

Ladomir couldn't muster the energy for a laugh. He could manage another snarled smile, that never reached his eyes. Pulling back and revealing more teeth and a hollow expression. "Oh, little bird. That is exactly what he would've wanted."

And like that, Sneh was once more utterly confused and the bowl laid bare, the last fritter being dished out onto the plate as the small human looked up at him, her bushy brows furrowed.

He met her gaze unflinchingly, that hollow grin still etched into pale skin, tugging at those blue veins. Unknown and hard read emotion dancing across his sharp features. "Did you think a caring father, breeds a legion of men like me?"

"No." She hissed back with a cold matter of factness as Sneh grabbed a fritter and turned away to eat it.

Folding his arms, Ladomir continued, unfazed by Sneh's cold retorts, already having grown so use to them. His voice carrying a mockingly thoughtful tone. "Tell me, did your father care for you? Love you?"

"For a time." she said leaning her back on the counter. "Maybe that’s too cynical." Eating the sustenance like a small animal finally finding a meal, she chose her words carefully. "I'd like to hope he never stopped at least in his heart but, he wasn't a stable man and anything I feel toward him now is his own fault." A scowl seeped its way into her words. taking another to devour, the memory of being taught how to ride a horse with him flooding back with every bite.

Ladomir's smile widen, a smile fit for a beast of sharp, razor teeth. Lacking any warmth or joy and holding nothing but a similar deep cynicism looking for any way to present itself. But he was not a many fanged beasts, with razor sharp teeth. Just another creature who had given up on too many things. "Then you have more in common with the sons of Kurze then you might realize."

She looked up at him those same bushy pointy brows furrowed as she chewed.

"I too like to think he cared, in the beginning at least. Though that was far before my time. Even then I don't always believe myself about that either." He admitted, a dry chuckle rumbling through his throat. An almost wistful sounding thing. "He used to love what his Night Lords were. Yet the moment he began to recruit the likes of us from Nostramo, he gave up without effort. He called us poison and began to lose all love he might've had for our legion."

“I don’t blame him,” Sneh mumbled such soft eyes averting once mor, “but then again, if he made that decision himself then I suppose he only has himself to blame.”

The soft amusement he held as she spoke in turn, grossly far removed from such a specific struggle that he gave her crumbs and notes of, sometimes assessing correctly, sometimes not. Sometimes spouting opinions that would have her killed in the wrong rooms. "Yes, I can't say he had a choice when he began recruiting us." Ladomir conceded in part. "He used to rule Nostramo though. He was the Night Haunter, a shadowy figure, who saw the corruption polluting our world like a black, rotten cavity. He gutted and flayed every degenerate cur he could find, tracking them in the dead of night and stringing them up for all to see, as a warning. There was peace, and justice on Nostramo. But then he left, and debauchery again filled the void he left. I used to dream that he would come back and restore justice again."

“You dream of justice?” She asked looking up at him much like the small birds that once sat on his windowsill. Far too close for their own good and far too talkative for where they sat.

"Yes." The word hissed from his lips in quick return, within his eyes a small glint of madness. Or perhaps more accurately a fanaticism. The joints of his armour growling like a stalking animal as he leant just a little closer. "Justice. We used to bring justice, wherever we went, striking fear into all until the mere thought of sowing chaos would leave them pale as a corpse. Until our father gave up on the dream, he put us all upon."

She'd been backed literally into a corner, her face now struck with a mixture of a brave face hiding fear as he leant back into the animalistic venom, he'd had that afternoon when he peered around the corner at her in her kitchen. Those damned reflective eyes passing from white to red and back as he spoke and tilted his head.

"I swore I would bring justice to my home myself. That I would return and bring back order, save our home, and instil the fear of Night Lord justice once more. I would make sure, that no one would be born into a galaxy that didn't want them, ever again." The words fell from his pale lips in an unfiltered stream, memories clawing each and every syllable back to the surface kicking and screaming. Old memories of days far gone, regrets long lost to time, and promises left broken in the dirt. Ladomir hadn't even realized he was so close to his little bird, boxing her in the way he did. "What did our father do, however? When he decided that the legion was poisoned beyond repair, that his faith in us was not worth his spit? He ordered us into orbit above Nostramo, and he ordered every ship in the fleet to fire its lance torpedoes. He gave up before trying any other solution, Kurze destroyed our home!"

She shivered in place over such violent words and imagery. It wasn't her home she held no attachment to it but with the deep vitriol in his eyes that he bared down at her she felt like he'd near hold her responsible for such actions. "...Ladomir." She said in a feeble attempt to have him back off before he ripped her head from her shoulders or worse.

His name, broke the beast from his own world, shattered the little bubble and brought him into the present, staring down at his cook, more a bird than anything resembling the Night Haunter. Silence fell, as a breath huffed from between his lips, his expression falling into a painful neutrality as he stood straight once more. Silently turning so his back was to her, and he took a few places away. "...He went mad, in his final days, secluding himself to his damn Screaming Gallery. When he died, it was with hate for us on his lips. Do you know how many of my brother's chased down his killer, burning with the need to avenge him?"

She didn't answer he damn well knew she had no insight to his legion's history least of all their father. "...If you despise him so, then why care about his word of what your fate should be so very much?" Sneh asked under her breath as he turned away and left her to sink down to give herself a sense of comfort in her small, curled position.

"Because he could see the future." Ladomir huffed, his shoulders sagging, the sense of relief in his chest felt like a rock being lifted from his ribcage. The words admittance was slim however, and it was back once again in full force, reminding him why he chose to ignore such a fact so viciously. "It drove our father mad, and he knew that only one, of his poisonous sons was filled with enough vengeful rage to hunt down his killer. We are the sons of one of only two primarchs, that truly hated their sons, and ours condemned us and our futures."

"Then forget him, you live in his shadow despite despising him. Future site or not, he can't see anything anymore. He'd dead." Sneh barked with a renewed passion, perhaps a fraction too loud for her own good as she squatted on the floor.

Ladomir immediately cast his black gaze back over his shoulder, baring into the curled ball that was his little bird, and he hated that it made him feel any sense of regret, no matter the shape it took in his soul. Above all, he almost looked bewildered at her reply. The sheer boldness in Sneh's return. Her confidence despite him, the ghost of a dead demi-god she had never heard of, and despite her own fear. For a moment, Ladomir simply admired that. "Oh, little bird... I wish I had met you on Nostramo."

She looked at him confused, she knew she had a terrible mouth, one that had gotten her awful trouble over the year and yet, Sneh never seemed to learn. Not even now that she stood on a barbaric ship with demons that could crush or skin or rape, without as much as a care. She wasn't a person here, she was a tool, with a loud gabbing mouth and she wasn't going to stop chirping.

"I ruined your meal with this. I shouldn't have let myself get carried away in the shadow, it's true enough. Thank you for the words, Sneh." It was an unexpected switch in vulnerability. Not that his rant just minutes before wasn't one already. Here though was the closest he seemed in being honest with the slave, true in himself. Even then, Ladomir could hardly look at her and do so at the same time.

She wondered if he’d leave, if he’d simply leave her there and someone else would come to crush her. So, hugging her knees she said, “…You made them well.”

Again, did the great animal shift, facing her side on now, not quite full, but his back wasn't to her neither. His deep black eyes gazing down at her with his nose up turned. A stare that once again lasted a painfully silent minute. As he so seemed to enjoy doing, to assess the situation, or person, by simply staring in awkward silence. Then, he finally levelled his gaze more properly. "You taught well."

And without another word, she tucked her head into her knees and hid like a small bird hoping the terrible fiends would let her live a day more.

"Perhaps you would teach again, and I will not be stuck in old shadows in that time." It was almost a request. Perhaps a hope? A simple musing? Whether it was his pride, embarrassment, or the simple fact he was an Astartes, and they never knew how to communicate well, it was hard to tell. In part maybe a promise even. More than any other on this ship would offer. Hell, maybe more than even an average Astartes would. Yet it was a kind of peace offering nonetheless, and for whatever reason, Ladomir hoped it would leave at least a slight bit less terrified.

Those bushy brows peaked out at him and then a pair of dark familiar soft eye and she nodded. “…. Maybe, maybe you could tell me what you’d like next time.” Her voice soft, small almost sweet in how she spoke from the safety of her corner.

Ladomir thought for a moment, softly nodding before running a midnight hand through his black and grey hair, finally turning to face Sneh once more. "Maybe I could. I suppose I will have to think of it then."

And so, she nodded from the safety of her lap and some part of her mind hoped he’d offer her a hand again. So that she might finally take him up in that offer.

With slow, measured movements, he unfurled his arms from where they had been, folded behind his back. Slow, almost machine-like movements moving in time with the growl of servo armour joints as he extended a hand to his little bird. A surprising grace, from a demi-human whose armour had skulls and skin for common accessories.

Taking it, she was hesitant but caved the warm soft fingertips washing over his hand like it had before when she laid asleep in his arms. But rather this time, she gripped onto him. That little face once more peering up at him as he took her hand.

It made him wish, even if it was for but a second, that once again he had no gauntlets, and that he could hold her hand freely. With a strength measured quite well by the one it belonged to; he raised the mortal back to her feet. Given the way he had to hold it, he was practically cradling his little bird's hand.

“I s’pose the human crew needs to eat too, right?” She asked not letting go yet, not until he let her, lest she offend.

With an almost reluctant hum, he let go of her hand, conceding the fact with another nod of the void black haired head. "That I suppose they do. It would be regrettable, if the master of auspex dropped on the bridge from starvation."

She nodded and picked up the plate piled with a massive number of fritters ready for the hungry bridge team to be fed.

Much like the last time Ladomir spoke into the vox on his forearm. Giving the go ahead for the crew deck. Or at the very least the ones that were allowed first. It had taken a moment, but they all arrived, old, slightly hunched things. All pale skin and black eyes like their demon like masters. Words falling from their tongues in that similar rosy snake's hiss. There were different gazes from them, than the Night Lords all around. Some seemed to be weary of a newcomer, some seemed pleased by looking at the newcomer. Though most harboured some form of suspicious glare, some may have held confusion seeing who was there in charge of direction her, and perhaps there were even some glances of pity. Above all, they were hungry.

That was to be expected she supposed, it would’ve been nice to have someone to talk to but alas. But she’d only spent a couple of days here, who knew what the future held. “What is this language you all speak?” She softly asked to the night lord as Sneh served plate after plate.

"Nostraman." Ladomir returned, casting sharp glares toward any of the crew the past, and deemed had to questionable a glint in their eye, no matter it's nature, or who they stared at. "The Bloody Screech and other Night Lord vessels hold what’s left of that planet, including our language."

She looked out at the people with a soft sobering look, almost a solemnness in her stare as she realised finally. That yeah, this was the last of a people no matter how heinous or vile they’d been described the death of an entire people was frightening and saddening. “I see.” She said the longing for Ghilana tugging at her heart, the memory of Ladomir similarly expressing such longing clawing at her mind.

As much as they all shared similarities, even between the Astartes of their kind, there was still a divide that kept it even now from being one in the same. Regardless of the difference in height, it was hard to tell shat thing was. Perhaps, the over four centuries of life etched into Ladomir's eyes was that barrier. No matter what it was, it kept him from even feeling a connection to what was, quite literally, the last of his people outside of his brothers. "Give it time, you'll learn it after long enough on this ship."

She looked to him shocked at the notion. The notion she’d be stuck here for longer than she’d think to even conceive of. She didn’t belong here, she longed to be a temporary solution, something to be tossed out after her usefulness had been expired. She couldn’t stay here, she couldn’t. And yet, her want wasn’t something to be remotely considered here, not when she was useful. Not when they needed to eat. “Oh.” Her voice was deep and hollow, a void ringing out from her soul as she served still.

"By then I'm sure you'll have a kitchen crew you'll be flaying with that sharp tongue, rather than a knife." The thought amused Ladomir, watching his little bird command the mess and terrify poor serfs trying to hustle out food as quickly as they could, quivering under her bushy browed wrath. "Who knows, maybe by then I won't be an issue for you anymore, I just might be a meal." It was a morbid joke, a morbid thought, but when to men of his calibre, his life was but a fickle thing in the grand scheme, morbidity was but a common thought. Let alone one such as the macabre warband.

"You?" She quaked before snapping her jaw shut for such a loud exclamation in the busy hall.

Ladomir cared not for the odd glances from the deck crew. Their black void filled eyes pouring the endlessness into Sneh, before quickly dashing away for the food, and as to not stare too long at the demi-human. His laugh echoed next, grinning down at his serf, taking in her surprise with a joy. "Oh, come little bird, there's too much to just waste if it can be helped. I am not loved enough by any on this ship, that they would cremate me before I could be tossed into the butcher's locker."

"I don't think even I could bring myself to do anything to you in a state like that." She whispered trying not to merge the image of the frozen man she'd been forced to carve and a glassy eyed Ladomir looking through her.

At that, Ladomir raised a brow. Confusion and intrigue dancing across his marble cracked features. So utterly alien, despite being so utterly human in origin. "Why not?"

She looked up at him like he'd overstepped. Her gaze shuffled to him and quickly back, a furrowed brow as she continued to serve not another word passing her lips.

The confused intrigue only deepened on his brow, still trying to decipher what all her little, and painfully human, expressions meant. This one was certainly alluding him quite well, given he'd figure the little baker would have no issue with the theoretical of her captor. "Regardless, I have no intent on ending up there, anytime soon."

"Good," She spat back gritting her teeth and then serving up the last fritter. "Otherwise, I'd have to eat you all to myself." Grasping the large plates, she began to stake them.

Ladomir watched her go, reminding much too greatly of that bushy bird hopping around his window. Nabbing breadcrumbs and giving him pointed glares, followed by chirps. "Don't make a promise you can't keep, little bird."

"You won't know any better. You'll be dead." She spouted under her breath. "Besides by that point I'll have been off of meat for a long time so who knows maybe eating you'd be good for me. Hell, maybe I can turn your skin into an apron or something, like you disgusting fiends." Sneh scoffed at the idea herself but didn't stop in her grouchy delivery or demeanour. Not when he felt the need to get so high and mighty over a baseline he'd only known for a few days.

Ladomir fell silent, his black gaze raking along the mortal's painfully human form. Something that held no chance against him, hardly compared to him, and was nothing to him. Yet, all he could feel was a faint but true enough respect. An admiration of her sharp tongue, and vicious words, and the lack of care with which she spat them at the demi-human. She feared, and yet Sneh seemed to bite with just as much energy. "I would be honoured, if you did as such, little bird."

She slowly looked up at him from behind with a grotesque furrowed shock, her mouth stretched taught into a thin line.

"Truly, I could not fathom being worn by any of my brothers. yet with you..." A joke danced across his lips, like the string across a violin as he let out a soft chuckle. "Well, even in death, I would still serve."

Sneh walked on carrying the massive trays dismissing his... odd comment as she took them into be cleaned. "You're terrible." She spat dumping them in the sink to begin cleaning.

That same sound rumbled from his throat, teeth glinting in what little light there was, as he forever shadowed Sneh in her little human activities. "Mm, and is this a new revelation?"

"No, but it doesn't mean you're any less terrible." She spat scrubbing down the serving plates wondering if he'd always be shadowing her or if he'd ever drag her elsewhere or leave her alone ever.

"I told you not to make a promise you couldn't keep, let alone ones so bold. You doubled down, like one of us no less." Ladomir was happy to retort, taking far too much joy in prodding at the serf as he always did, especially when she was allowing herself such striking words. Insolence could be enjoyable from time to time, he found, and he wasn't so quick to anger that he'd be fed up the moment her dagger tongue spoke.

"I never promised you anything." Sneh hissed closing her eyes as she scrubbed and washed every square inch of the servers in the warm water.

"As you say, little bird." Ladomir returned, amusement fresh on his features, scars tugging at his lips, and midnight arms folded over one another, a monument of skulls, armour, and flesh. Suddenly, it was like he never held or thrust his anger for the galaxy out at the world around. Like nothing had happened at all.

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[ssseashell]

ˑ ִ ֗ ִ 𓋼𓍊 ۫ ⊹ masterlist of my newtmas fanfics !

from canon:

💽 In the Meantime | 1/1 | 2,7k

tags: canon divergence, set between TST and TDC, movie!verse, Pov Thomas, Friends to Lovers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, References to The Beatles

💉 Walking to the bright lights, in sorrow | 1/1 | 4,3k

tags: canon divergence, TDC movie!verse, Light Angst with Hurt/Comfort, Thomas loves Newt, love confessions, Newt has the Flare, Title from a Jeff Buckley song

🌲 Dragon Eyes | 1/1 | 2,1k

tags: canon divergence, set between TST and TDC, movie!verse, nights in the scorch, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Title from an Adrianne Lenker song

🌊 Velvet Mood | 1/1 | 2,9k

tags: Safe Haven AU, Newt lives, Post Canon Fix-It, Nightmares, Sick Newt, Thomas takes care of Newt, war flashbacks, Title and Inspired by an Alice Phoebe Lou

🩹 Scars, Freckles and Soft Lips | 1/1 | 3,5k

tags: Canon divergence, The Scorch Trials, movie!verse, Newt is injured, Thomas takes care of Newt

📻 How To Disappear | 1/1 | 3,5k

tags: Canon divergence, in between TST and TDC, movie!verse, Thomas has a crush on Newt, Drunk Newt, Surviving in the Scorch, Title from a Lana Del Rey song

🧭 Just Ashes In Your Tomorrow | 1/1 | 1,5k

tags: Set during The Death Cure, movie!verse, Unrequited Love, Newt loves Thomas, Newt has the Flare

alternate universes:

💌 Running back to you | 1/1 | 795

tags: College AU, short and sweet, inspired by “Spring Into Summer” by Lizzy McAlpine, Drabble

🥃 Do I Wanna Know? | 2/2 | 6k

tags: College AU, Bar AU, Friends to Lovers, Friends with Benefits, Newt loves Thomas, Thomas loves Newt, Title and Inspired by the Artic Monkeys song

🎾 Blind altercation, open invitation | 1/1 | 2,6k

tags: Challengers AU, Newt has a Crush on Thomas, Oblivious Thomas, Late Night Conversations, Title from an Adrianne Lenker song

🎙️ Your voice makes me want to kiss you | 1/1 | 5k

tags: Modern setting, College AU, Karaoke nights, Drinking & Talking, Teresa and Thomas are siblings

🎃 Love is like a star (Isn’t that worth holding on?) | 2/2 | 5,9k

tags: Halloween, Ghost AU, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Angst, Thomas Loves Newt, Title from a Mitski song

☕️ It’s kind of cold, so I want a cup of coffee (and your number) | 1/1 | 1,2k

tags: Coffee shop AU, Barista Newt, mutual pining, bad pick-up lines

🍃 About Italian Summers and an Italian boy | 1/1 | 2,9k

tags: Call me by your name AU, Newt is english, Thomas is italian, Fluff

📚 Good Luck, Babe! | 6/6 | 46k

tags: College AU, Newt loves Thomas, Unrequited Love, Oblivious Thomas, Newt and Teresa are bffs, Thomas, Brenda and Minho are bffs, background relationships, domestic fluff, love confessions, Title and Inspired by a Chapell Roan song

🛣️ Warmth | 1/1 | 576

tags: College AU, car rides, Ivy trio, Drabble

🪩 All I Ever Wanted (Is Here In My Arms) | 1/1 | 3,5k

tags: 2000’s Club AU, Drunk Newt, Jealous Newt, Drunk Kissing, Title from a Depeche Mode song

🌌 To Get Lost In The Stars (And Not In Your Eyes) | 1/1 | 1,2k

tags: Modern setting AU, Night at the beach, bonfires, stargazing, Fluff

🎄 Five Days Until Christmas | 1/1 | 9,1k

tags: High School AU, Christmas AU, Friends to Lovers, Oblivious idiots in Love, Christmas Eve, Christmas Songs

[leggerefiore]

If you still want ideas for Volo, here’s one.

Volo’s a villain and people rightfully oppose him, but that negative public image would also apply to his lover too.

You (his partner) probably aren’t treated as badly as he is, but it’s clear that people don’t want to associate with his you, either because they’re against Volo or because they’re scared of him.

How does Volo react to this treatment of you?

(This is also probably a fun prompt to explore with other villains, but you can just stick to Volo if you’d like.)

did some others i thought might be interesting to explore

cw: implied violence, isolation, slight angst

characters: Volo, Cyrus, Colress

💫Volo📜

⭐️ There were similarities between you both that he would begrudgingly admit since the beginning. Perhaps, that was what originally had attracted him to you, aside from the obvious potential of you standing in the way of his plans. The lands of Hisui was isolate and distant, with many groups living among each other with disdain. Outsiders were often brought in with extreme scrutiny and judgement. Especially with a situation as odd as yours. His heart stung in a familiar manner when he saw you sitting alone, rejected by the Galaxy Team and both clans. He knew his intentions were not the purest, but there was a small part of him wishing to give the treatment that he had never received. These similarities would lead to him sharing his ideals. While he would have preferred working alone, you were completely entranced with his promise of a new world without all the sorrow of this one.

⭐️ So he would notice the little things. Judgement was a silent thing, after all. You had been forgiven for everything – another Survey Corps member and that professor carefully explaining your headspace and claiming manipulation. It hurt the blond to see those who so casually cast you aside and judged you harshly take you back in. The harshness towards you would never subside. You attempted to hide it from him, not wanting to spur up his intense feelings, but Volo was more than acquainted with how to go around undetected. He observed everything closely around you. The ways the inhabitants of the village often remarked you with scorn. The Hero of Hisui seemed like an empty title. Rumours of how you had actually aided him clearly spread far and deep. He felt rage at their expressions – something so known and despised by him. The looks he had always experienced in his life.

⭐️ He knew there was little he could do. The blond had gone into hiding after everything, knowing that many would want him dead for what he attempted to do. What he still had the full intentions of finishing. He could only watch and feel his passion reignite with a new vigour. This world… It was far too painful. Not only for him. He needed to find a way to call upon Arceus again. If anyone dared a raise a hand toward you, however, he would definitely intervene. A tall, terrifying blond man would suddenly emerge from some place nearby and restrain them. He will not stand for any true violence towards you. The isolation towards you is nothing new, at least. Everyone had been suspicious of you since your arrival, and now it had only increased. He simply would offer you to fully abandon your life in the Galaxy Team and truly join him. Volo figures that this is the best ending for you both.

🌌Cyrus🛰

☄️ He had been blinded entirely by his grandiose goals. His new world – He had been so close. So close. Yet, it slipped through his fingers. This horrid world around him had one last final attack on him – to deny him even an escape from it. Staying in the Distortion World to rot away for the rest of eternity had been perfectly fine by him, but the thought of you, his beloved, doing the same sickened him. He knew how desperately you supported him – finding the idea of a world without horrible emotion more appealing than this reality. Your support spurred him to work faster, desperate to make a world where you both would finally know peace. Some small part of Cyrus was concerned with what would make you also agree with his vision, but the majority of him was simply relieved that you would not fight him on this and have your full support.

☄️ He would take notice quickly. The way people avoid you – Old friends and acquaintances cutting contact with little hesitation. The loneliness that began to surround you. He had made the decision to go back to the normal world with you, despite the trials and tribulations to certainly follow. The way people in the general public would shoot glares at you – One woman even attacking you and claiming that her brother had been brainwashed by Galactic. He felt those bitter emotions that he wanted nothing more than to completely eradicate. It was far too cruel. He should have been the target of their ire – not you. You clearly were a victim, driven by love for your partner, not thinking straight. That was what that champion had claimed, but it appeared that had not at all become the common sentiment. Many remarked you as a horrible person, ready to force everyone into a situation that none of them wanted. He could only clench his jaw.

☄️ He acts without hesitation. In any situation in which he is around, and you experience scorn, he glares at whoever dared do such a thing until they leave. Anyone who even dares think to enact physical violence towards you will be shown just how surprisingly fit the Galactic Boss is. The idea of someone hurting you in any way is enough to drive him mad, and he cannot forgive himself for his shortcoming there himself. He had wanted you to be uninvolved in his plans for exactly this reason, yet he allowed himself the indulgence of your support. Part of him wants to curl away back in the Distortion World and give up in everything, but the other half feels more driven to protect you. He would take responsibility. It was all he could do. Maybe… Maybe you both could move away from Sinnoh, but where would you go? Cyrus's mind begins to wander. If he was forced to be in this world… Where did he want to be? The two of you would eventually have a long discussion about this.

🥼Colress🛸

🧪 Had you been exactly supporting Team Plasma? Not really. Colress had not been himself, despite being called the leader of it. Part of him was fully aware of Ghetsis using him, but the other half simply did not care, as long as he got to also work on his research unabated. You supported that – So understanding towards his strong interest in bonds and how to bring out the full potential in pokemon. Colress knew he could put up with whatever madness Ghetsis drug him through, so long as he had that. But… Well, he knew that it would become more and more difficult for you to fully support what he was doing. Your upset over the Opelucid City incident, ever present in his mind. But, in the end, you had supported him, and he was still the acting head of Team Plasma.

🧪 Which meant… Even after the remains of Team Plasma had faded out, and he had disbanded the group, you found yourself under the harsh judgement of those around you. Colress paid attention to you closely after it all, worrying about the worst possible scenarios. Friends seemed less inclined to be around you following it, and most acquaintances had completely cut you out – not wishing to be connected with a so-called member of Team Plasma. You had not been. Colress would not have let you, but how much time you had spent at his side had only encouraged the thought. So, you had people yell at you about having their pokemon stolen or the act of terrorism on Opelucid. A few even dared tried to attack you physically, wanting you to hand over pokemon you did not have. It was all quite traumatic. Colress hated every single second of it.

🧪 He refused to let any of it happen in front of him. His work with the International Police following has cleared him from any possible arrests, and you had been determined to almost be entirely uninvolved. Even though that had been announced, it was clear those affected wanted an easy vessel for their anger. Colress much would prefer they target him over you, but he supposed they were just taking anyone they could. He acts to deter anyone with malicious intentions quite often. A cold glare and a hand on one of his pokeballs is usually enough to scare anyone off, but not always. If someone feels inclined towards violence, he shows a surprising amount of strength and catches them. He really will not accept any horrible treatment toward you. A request to work with a certain Alolan organisation could not have come sooner. You two would be out of Unova, and this would all seem like a bad dream.

[readychilledwine]

Bound by Fate pt 5

Summary - When Kaylee Archeron meets Azriel, her world turns upside down. Between balancing her trauma, new powers, a mating bond, and war looming over her new home, Kaylee learns everything is not as little as it once seemed.

Warnings - implied cheating, implied sex pollen use, intense make-out session, miscommunication, love triangle trope getting messy

A/N - forgive me, but it serves a purpose.

Series Masterlist Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Azriel couldn't take it anymore.

Kaylee and Lucien giggling softly as they ran through the woods, through the halls, through the gardens.

Rhys had banned the red headed male from all the Archeron sisters, minus his Kaylee. Lucien for some fucking reason was given access to Kaylee at all times.

And it was infuriating. Azriel hid behind the mask he had well as he held Elain's hand, listening to her cry and whisper her sorrows of lost love, lost opportunity, of how she'd always be alone.

“You will never be alone, Elain,” he countered softly. “You have your sisters, us, you will make friends.” Azriel didn't mention her mate. He knew it was too sore of a topic, and one she and Nesta demanded to avoid like a plague.

“And will I always have you?” The question seemed innocent to Azriel. The male too blinded by his love for the blonde's younger sister to realize what she was asking, what she was inferring.

“Of course, Elain,” the answer was a placement of a nail. One he'd soon have to stop for going into a coffin. “We will always be friends.”

-

Nights were Azriel's favorite. Kaylee was currently straddling his lap, their chests pressed together, his fingers laced in her silky hair as he allowed her to led their movements.

Her small hands ran up his arms, over his shoulders, then down to his hare chest, resting there as she kissed him deeply. His own hands began to roam. Fingertips dancing down the back of her neck, down her exposed upper back, bunching his shirt before pulling back from her and raising a brow.

Kaylee nodded at the silent question, allowing him to pull the top off and leave her upper half bare to him. “So beautiful, baby,” he trailed the back of his hand between her breasts, admiring her soft skin, her perky tits, the way goosebumps erupted across her. “I am the luckiest male.”

“More kisses,” her voice was breathless. “Now.” He started kissing her again, pulling her as close to him as possible to feel her skin to skin. He sent every ounce of love and longing down their bound, and Kaylee responded in kind, letting him feel how deeply she missed him. How it was like a dull ache in a lingering sore muscle.

While there was nothing innocent about the way she had crawled to him on hands and knees to straddle him, this kiss was clearly about needing connection, about needing to feel him, and they both poured every slipped away and lost moment of passion into it before parting to breathe.

Azriel rested his forehead on hers, large hands resting on the curves of her hips.

“I'm proud of you,” he stated evenly watching as her eyes fluttered shut and shoulders sank. “You are truly doing everything you can to make the best of this situation and I could not be more proud to call you my mate.”

Kaylee kissed him quickly again, then placed her head between his neck and shoulder. “Sing to me?”

“Forever,” he whispered back.

Everyone almost froze as Nesta and Elain came down for breakfast. Elain seemed frozen in her spot at the doorway as well. Azriel had Rhysand to his right as they discussed a small mission Azriel would be going on, and Kaylee was to his left. The scent of their bond lingering heavily in the air. Lucien was across from Kaylee, feyre to his right and Cassian to his left. The two of them took the spots by Mor and Amren. Not speaking as they did and began to eat.

Kaylee was too blind in her happiness to notice the way Elain seemed to stab and cut things while staring aggressively in her direction, nor did she notice the disapproval in Nesta's face as Azriel leaned down to kiss Kaylee's nose.

“What's that smell,” Nesta finally asked. Her piercing silver eyes hitting Kaylee and Azriel.

“That,” Rhysand spoke for them, his beast urging him to protect Kaylee from a viper, “is the scent mates give off when they're content and happy emotionally. They smell like nighttime and toasted sugar. Feyre and I smell like sea salt and lilac. You will get used to it.” Rhysand allowed his beast to comfort a now embarrassed and uncomfortable Kaylee. Watching as the youngest sister recoiled into herself.

Feyre gave her a look of sympathy, as did Lucien, who stood and walked around the table, looking at Azriel before offering Kaylee his hand. “Let's go find you another animal to bond to, my dear.” Her and Lucien left, after Azriel kissed her palm, a silent promise to find her before he departed for a few days.

Amren shot Rhys a look the second Elain moved to take Kaylee's seat, now clinging to Azriel and Nesta gave her own plate a smug look. He then shared one with Cassian, the both of them watching as Elain attempted to flirt with Azriel. I think I may have made a mistake. Rhysand admitted to Feyre through their link. We may need to start weening her off of time with Azriel.

Feyre sent a wave of confirmation. Preferably before something stupid happens.

-

Lucien and Kaylee returned late that night. The Autumn male was carrying the youngest sister, releasing her instantly to Rhysand when asked. “She did great. She made a new friend. I need to figure out what the fuck it was, though.”

Cassian's brows instantly reached his hairline. “What do you mean?”

Lucien shrugged leaning against the wall as Feyre brought him wine. “I think it was a Thunderbird. White and gold, feathered, large, sun seemed to bend and break as it flew. It rained on Kaylee, just Kaylee as it hovered above her.” Him and Rhys held eye contact. “This would be her third beast of legend, would it not?”

Rhys nodded. “She has not linked with the fire drake yet. But she did link to the unicorn. Hence why she's able to use more magic lately. It will be interesting to see what ability a Thunderbird would share.”

“She sensed a rock slide,” Lucien answered. “It shared with her the ability to sense danger. The Stag gave her command of the forest, the hawk gave her eyesight, the only one I'm confused about is the otter.”

Feyre giggled beside them. “You mean the one that scales the House and climbs into her and Azriel's bed every night?”

All three heads turned towards the High Lady. “There's a what in my house every night?”

“So, what did it offer her?”

Lucien answered the question softly. “Comfort. It offered her comfort. She's been… upset and lonely lately,” he turned to Cassian. “I think you and can empathize slightly.”

The general nodded, tucking a piece of Kaylee's long sandy blonde hair behind her ear. “Will she be ready for the High Lord's meeting? Rhysand's beast called for her first, they haven't fully linked yet, but Rhysand's beast is constantly calling for her. She needs to be able to block out all of them. For her safety.”

Lucien shrugged. “I don't know. I do know everything she links to is coming with a price,” he turned to Feyre. “Can you feel her in you?”

The High Lady's brow knit, silent confusion all over her face. “No?”

Lucien just nodded and chuckled lightly, twisting a dagger in his hands. “Well, she can feel you. How is Elain?”

Rhys shrugged. “Refuses to come out for anyone but Azriel. Refuses to eat for anyone but Azriel. Slowly becoming obsessed with Azriel,” the confession hung in the air. “And Nesta is encouring it because “fuck the mating bond and fuck Kaylee,” lovely little snake ypu find yourself attached to, brother.”

Cassian kicked off the wall. “We need separate them before he does something he will regret for the rest of his life, or before that one,” he inclined his head to Lucien, “says fuck it. And in turn, that one,” his head went to Kaylee this time, “decides to say fuck it too.”

Lucien didn't tell them Kaylee was already there. That he was getting there.

A week later -

Azriel's hands shook as he left Elain's room. Deep unstable breaths trying to stabilize evenly as he stared at his hands.

A throat cleared down the hall and Lucien leaned against a doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed at the calves. No words had to be said between the two. No words could be said between the two. The scent of it lingered in the air, on him, and Lucien had felt every damned second through the bond.

“It's not what it looks like, Lucien, I swear.”

The Red head clicked his tongue. “You're leaving my mate's room at 3am and I can smell sex on you. Don't fucking play me like a fool, Azriel.”

Lucien left him there alone. Not allowing Azriel to explain what had happened. How it had happened. He stalked to his room, opening the door quietly to see a sleeping Kaylee.

He reached out to touch her, but stopped, instantly going to the bathroom and stripping himself of his leathers for the first time in several days. He scrubbed his skin raw, feeling the last bit of whatever the fuck Elain had managed to get a hold of leaving his system. It hadn't gone further than her offering him a late night drink to celebrate his return home. It hadn't gone further than Elain kissing him before that thing living deep inside of him roared out for Kaylee and Kaylee only, trying with desperate claws and warnings to get him away.

He hadn't even touched Elain. Not when she stripped herself bare for him. Not when she began to touch herself. Not when she came loudly, possibly alerting every awake ear to the sound of his name leaving her throat in pleasure.

He got out of the tub, drying himself off instantly and pulling on sweatpants before getting into bed behind Kaylee and pulling her close to him. He scented himself on her neck, mixing his cedar and chilled night air with Kaylee's soft scent of toasted sugar and snowfall.

She whispered his name in her sleep, one of her small hands finding his and lacing their fingers together.

This was the calm before the storm, Azriel knew this. Lucien had heard. Kaylee would possibly scent it in the morning. Elain would tell Nesta. And Mother help him if Nesta knew before Kaylee.

Rhys and Azriel were absent from breakfast. Then Cassian. The shadowsinger was currently sitting next to Rhysand in his office telling and showing him everything while Cassian searched Elain's room and then Nesta's, finally finding a vial clearly supplied by the House of Wind.

Cassian tossed it to Rhys before comforting Azriel, knowing damn well where this was going. How it would end. “You have to tell Kaylee and explain what actually happened before Nesta, Elain, or Lucien does.” Cassian spoke softly, forcing Azriel to look at him. “I will handle my mate. You need to protect yours.”

Azriel nodded. “Where did she get that, though?”

Rhys looked up at the ceiling. Twin shadowy figures appeared, looking down in guilt. “We gave it Nesta,” Nuala refused to look at Azriel, her eyes locked on the ground. “She told us she was going to use it to experiment with herself. She had read about it in one of her… novels,” the males all snorted at the amusing choice of words. “Had we known she would try to use it on Azriel and Elain, we would have never supplied it.”

Cerridwen had not spoken, her lower lip trembling. Azriel moved to her instantly. “It's not your fault. You two can repay me by befriending Elain, get her some hobbies. I need space from her and Nesta, and you two are wonderful company.” The twins nodded, both throwing themselves into Azriel's arms. “I am not angry with you two. I'm mad at myself for allowing it to get as far as it did.”

The three males walked down the stairs to a silent breakfast. Nesta was standing, smirking down at Kaylee who just sat still as a ghost. Feyre's eyes were wide. Mor was shaking her head as if something didn't make sense. Amren was glaring to Elain. And Lucien, Lucien was silent rage. He stood slamming his hands down and left the room, shoving the other three males before going to his own space.

“Kaylee,” Feyre said softly. “Do you want Rhys to take you to the Riverhouse?”

Then the three of them knew. They knew Nesta had told Kaylee, and the silence and stillness in the youngest sister was shock.

“No,” Kaylee whispered. “I'm leaving with Lucien. I'll go help him find the lost queen.” Kaylee stood on shaking legs, looking down as she walked away. Azriel followed her up the stairs, grabbing her in the hallway.

“Please let me explain what happened.”

Kaylee shook her head.

Lucien appeared in the hall, a bag packed and slung over his shoulder. “What the fuck is there to explain, Azriel. Pretty sure Nesta painted a pretty visual picture for all of us.”

Azriel held eye contact with Kaylee only. “Let me explain, please. Come to our room and talk to me.” Kaylee tried to pull her arm away, noticing now the second bag Lucien held in his hands. Her bag.

Azriel's grip in her tightened, and Lucien scoffed, “I watched you leave her room at 3am before heading into Kaylee's. Nesta and I heard everything.”

“Let me explain.”

Kaylee finally let go, letting the anger, frustration, and annoyance finally peak. Her voice hardly seemed her own. “You don't need to fucking explain. I was a pretty stepping stool to get to my beautiful sister. You used me.” She ripped her arm from Azriel going to Lucien's side. “Take me with you.” He handed Kaylee the bag, his amber and gold eyes locking Azriel in place. “Do not follow us,” she commanded his beast, not him. “I'll come back when I'm ready.”

The second the door to the entry way shut and Lucien's spell cleaving was felt long enough for the two to winnow, Azriel lost it.

He destroyed his room. He destroyed the bathroom. He destroyed the mirrors.

Azriel sat on his bed seething as Feyre and Rhys entered. “Elain told us everything. Nesta is sticking to the story she made.” Rhys watched as the house repaired his brother's room. “Elain has been informed time with you is going to be limited, and that she needs to be the one to tell Kaylee and Lucien the truth.”

Feyre moved to the smashed bottles of Kaylee's perfumes and oils. “You'll have to forgive her for whatever she does next, Azriel,” Feyre sniffed her fingers, memorizing her little sister's scent incase she and Lucien didn't make it back home. “She's impulsive when she's angry, and she's hurt-”

Azriel finished the thought, knowing it was true and showing Rhys the memory of Kaylee's skin changing hues. “and wounded animals are the most dangerous.”

Taglist - @impossibelle @luvmoo @wallacewillow0773638 @nightless

@cat-or-kitten @knmendiola @holb32

@mis-lil-red @minakay @whatsupb18 @deeshag @justdreamstars @pyrostatic @acourtofmarvels @no1massassin @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @acourtofbatboydreams